


Skybird

by windsweptfic



Category: Inception (2010), White Collar
Genre: Crossover, Gen, M/M, adoption fic, family fic
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2010-09-29
Updated: 2010-09-29
Packaged: 2017-10-29 00:56:32
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 3
Words: 33,785
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/314073
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/windsweptfic/pseuds/windsweptfic
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Arthur and Eames adopt a kid and raise that kid into Neal Caffrey. From a <a href="http://community.livejournal.com/inception_kink/9327.html?thread=16972399#t16972399">prompt</a> at LJ's inception_kink.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Pulled From Orbit

Airports are one of the best places for thieves. Everyone there is in a hurry, bustling about and smacking into each other. There are the tired businessmen just wanting to get home; harried mothers trying to corral their kids. So many distractions and concerns keep most people from paying too close attention to the fact they’ve just had their wallet lifted.

Most people.

Neal was thirteen years old, the best teenage pickpocket this side of the Hudson and totally, completely fucked.

“Hey now,” said the man who held his wrist in an unbreakable grip. His accent was British, and his eyes were laughing as Neal tried to squirm away. “Only one man is allowed in my trousers, and you are not him.”

One of Neal’s favorite haunts were the New York Sports Bars at La Guardia airport: they were pre-security with open fronts, and family-friendly enough that he wasn’t too out of place there. The bar meant alcohol, and alcohol meant people getting drunk—which usually led to said people being relieved of their belongings.

Neal grimaced as the very thick, very expensive leather wallet was plucked from his hand and tucked back into the man’s pocket. He was wearing a rather faded grey suit: a pinstriped wool jacket unbuttoned over a coral-colored shirt. It fit well, tailored to the powerful lines of his body, but the fraying at the cuffs spoke of fondness and long usage. Neal had chosen the man because of his easy demeanor and slightly shabby appearance—it should have been an easy lift.

“Never underestimate your mark,” the Brit chided, as though reading his thoughts. “Some people purposefully set out to have others misjudge them.”

“People like you?” Neal grumbled, half-heartedly trying to regain possession of his hand. Despite the warning bells and firmly-entrenched instincts that came from living a life on the streets, he found himself helplessly intrigued. The man still hadn’t let him go, but he hadn’t reacted to the attempted pilfering with anything other than amusement—possibly even professional amusement. When he chuckled, the sound was deep and warm.

“And people like you, from the looks of things.” He gave Neal a meaningful once-over, piercing eyes picking up on the blue jeans and old sneakers, baseball cap and worn backpack completing the image of an innocent kid. The getup had scored Neal many a wallet before.

The man finally let go of his wrist, and Neal snatched his hand back. Logic smacked him over the head, telling him to scram, but something in the Brit’s eyes kept him held fast. After a moment Neal slid onto the stool next to him, and what might have been approval flickered in the man’s gaze. He made a motion at the bartender and after a few seconds a glass of water and a basket of fries appeared on the bar in front of Neal. He stared at them, and then back at the Brit.

“Who _are_ you?”

The man laughed. He turned his stool so he was facing Neal, resting his elbow on the bar and propping his chin in his hand, watching with amusement as Neal hesitantly poked at the fries.

“My name is Eames.” His eyes twinkled. “I’m a thief.”

 

* * *

 

An hour later, Neal had told Eames almost every detail about his life. He talked about his parents dying when he was six, about bouncing around between foster homes until he was eleven, and his recent crash-landing at a group home in Brooklyn. He griped about the homes that had been out of New York proper and away from civilization, confided the best places to pick pockets, expressed his disdain of the NYPD and proudly displayed the collection of stolen goods he’d acquired that night.

In that same hour, Neal learned that Eames grew up London, had been stealing— _nicking_ —things since he was a teenager, and had just returned on a flight from Brazil.

He still wasn’t entirely sure how that disparity of information had occurred.

“So where do you stay, then?” Eames asked after Neal had finished grumbling about the chaos of living in the group home. He shrugged, swirling his straw through the ice at the bottom of his glass.

“Different places around the city. They’re pretty strict on curfew, so I just don’t bother going back at night.”

He glanced at Eames askance, waiting for the inevitable pity. Yet the Brit surprised him, merely nodding in agreement and sipping at the half-empty glass of scotch he’d been nursing the entire time they’d been talking. After a moment he reached into his jacket pocket and fished out a pen, snagging one of the napkins on the bar. He scribbled on it for a moment before passing it over to Neal.

“You should come to my place.”

Neal stared at him, horrified. Eames grimaced and reached up to pinch the bridge of his nose.

“Bloody hell, not like _that_. All I meant was, if you need a place to stay—or if you ever want some tips on proper pickpocketing—I should be around for the next month or so.”

Neal looked down at the napkin, committing the address to memory before carefully folding it into quarters and tucking it in his pocket.

“Where do you go after that?”

Eames waved a vague hand. “Jobs. Places to go, people to see; stuff to nick. But when I’m in the States, I’ll be there.”

“What’s there?”

Eames’ smile was soft, fond.

“Home. A place I’ve been away from for far too long.”

Neal watched with a touch of wistfulness as the Brit finished off his glass of scotch and slipped off his barstool. He stood there for a moment, looking at Neal with that unnervingly penetrating gaze. The easygoing man was replaced, for a moment, by someone sharp and calculating—but after a heartbeat the expression was gone, and the casual smile returned.

“Take care of yourself, Neal,” Eames said, clapping him on the shoulder. “Talent like yours shouldn’t go to waste.”

Neal blinked at the man, bemused.

“But you caught me.”

Eames chuckled, glancing over his shoulder as he walked away, his eyes amused.

“And you’re the only one who’s ever managed to get my wallet out of my pocket before I noticed.”

It was two hours later before Neal found the fifty dollar bill tucked into his back pocket, along with another napkin. He hadn’t noticed Eames writing it, and it had only two words in a loopy scrawl:

 _‘Dream bigger.’_

 

* * *

 

Neal stood on the sidewalk on 59th Street, gaping up at the luxurious apartment complex in front of him. The lobby behind crystal-clear glass doors looked opulent, oozing class, and he felt suddenly very self-conscious about the torn jeans and ratty t-shirt he was wearing—never mind the split lip and black eye that had brought him there in the first place.

When Eames had given him the address, the man hadn’t mentioned he lived off of _freaking Central Park._

Neal hitched his backpack up his shoulder, combing his fingers distractedly through his hair. It had been two weeks since he’d met the enigmatic thief at La Guardia. He’d already lost the napkin to the washing machine at the laundromat, but he’d always had a good memory. He didn’t know if the offer still stood, or if Eames had even been serious—but he had nowhere else to go.

He took a deep breath, gathering the necessary nerve, and pushed open the door of the building.

The concierge looked at Neal like he was something sticky scraped off the bottom of his shoe. Neal quailed inwardly, but he hadn’t lived in New York his whole life without acquiring some acting skills. He threw on a casual grin and forced his features into something resembling ease.

“I’m here to see Eames. Fifteenth floor, apartment 1507. Tell him it’s Neal.”

The man slanted him a suspicious look. Nevertheless, he picked up the phone behind the counter, dialing a number.

“Mr. Eames? I’m sorry to disturb you, sir, but there is a…young man who says he’s here to see you. He says his name is Neal.”

There was a brief pause. When a flicker of surprise crossed the concierge’s face, Neal felt something unknot in his stomach. He shot back a smug look when the man glanced over at him with a sour expression.

“Of course, sir. I’ll send him right up.”

The concierge hung up the phone and pressed a button on the keypad on his desk, opening one of the elevators to the side of the lobby. Neal passed by him breezily, stepping into the bronze-plated elevator and turning around. Right before the doors closed, he stuck his tongue out.

Then he broke into helpless laughter at the sight of the concierge’s scandalized face.

There was no laughter when he knocked on Eames’ door, however. The man opened it with that same easy smile—which vanished the instant he caught sight of Neal. Eames was barefoot, wearing a pair of black sweatpants and a worn grey t-shirt, and Neal was surprised to see tendrils of black ink licking out from beneath the material.

Careful hands cupped his chin, tilting his face up as he was gently steered inside.

“Fucking hell, Neal, what happened?”

Neal opened his mouth to reply, but he found the words disappearing from his mind as he was ushered further into the apartment. Eames drew him into a gorgeous sitting room that had two floor-to-ceiling glass doors which opened out onto a balcony. Beyond that was the whole of Central Park, majestic and sweeping beneath them. The room itself was sleek, modern, with a slew of mahogany bookshelves and tasteful artwork decorating the walls. He couldn’t help but stare as Eames sat him down on a tremendously comfortable suede loveseat, dropping his backpack onto the floor next to a glass-topped coffee table, his head on a swivel.

He barely noticed that Eames had gone before the man was back, opening a first aid kit on the coffee table and pulling up a chair next to him.

“You _live_ here?”

“I do,” Eames replied, a touch of amusement coloring his voice. He seemed willing to allow Neal to avoid the subject for now, busying himself with assaulting him with stinging antiseptic instead. Neal let his eyes wander, raking over the paintings hung on the walls. He blinked.

“…is that a Francis Bacon?”

Eames glanced over his shoulder at the portrait of a man’s face in profile, the line of the man’s mouth a sweeping gash that the Joker would envy; splotches of bright yellow and orange laid over dark tones of grey and black. The thief wrinkled his nose.

“Oh, that dreadful picture. I got it for Arthur; the man has awful taste in art.”

Neal looked around the room again, as if searching for signs of said man. The apartment was oddly bare of personal touches: there were no photo frames on the walls or propped up on the bookshelves. The sitting room led into the kitchen, and he saw no magnets or adornments tacked to the fridge.

“Arthur works with the CIA,” Eames said with a slight smile, reading Neal’s mind in that uncanny way of his again. “He’s always careful about not being compromised. This is mostly his apartment, anyway—he works out of New York, while I work wherever the jobs take me.”

Neal’s stomach flipped instinctively at the mention of the CIA. Any kind of government body unnerved him; made him wary. Life as a pickpocket and thief generally tended to have one steer clear of anyone with a badge. Especially now.

Eames cast him a sharp look, catching the sudden tension in his shoulders.

“That’s why you’re here, isn’t it? Something happened that has you scared.”

Neal ducked his head, hunching his shoulders. He nodded silently.

“Well, come on, then,” Eames said gently, smoothing a band-aid over the cut above Neal’s left temple. “Out with it.”

Neal twisted his hands together in his lap, unable to look Eames in the eye. Unable to erase the smell of blood and the image imprinted in his brain of of red splattered across grey concrete.

“It was at one of the warehouses down by the Hudson. I sleep there sometimes; so do a bunch of other kids. There were—these guys. Gang members; Trinitario, I think. They had a guy on his knees behind some of the shipping crates. They were yelling…”

He shook his head, shuddering.

“They shot him,” he said, voice soft. “Shot him in the back of the head. I didn’t know what to do, so I ran… They saw me. Chased me. Got a look at my face. One of them managed to catch up—I got away, barely.” He touched the bruised skin around his eye. “I know they’ll ask around. They’ll find out where I go. This was the only place I could think of that they wouldn’t know I’d be.”

Silence stretched between them for a few moments, but to Neal it felt like decades. He flinched at the sudden ‘click’ of the first aid kit being shut. It wasn’t right, to bring this to Eames’ doorstep; not when the man had been so kind to him. He trembled as a gentle hand laid on his shoulder.

“It’s okay, Neal,” Eames said softly. “You’re safe here, I promise you that. We’ll sort this out. Okay?”

Neal finally chanced a glance up. The firm confidence in Eames’ voice, the steely glint in his eyes—something made Neal believe him, wholly and completely, and he managed a small, honest smile.

“Okay.”

 

* * *

 

“That’s not spelled right.”

Eames raised an eyebrow as Neal pointed at the Scrabble board between them, a perplexed look on the boy’s face. ‘COLOUR’ intersected with ‘RADAR’ and ‘QUELL’, tucked between a pair of double-letter markers and evilly taking Neal’s spot. The Brit laughed.

“That’s the Queen’s proper English, I’ll have you know.”

“It’s _wrong_ ,” Neal muttered. He was more put out over the fact he had to use a backup word—which would garner considerably fewer points—than Eames’ bending of the rules. He scratched at the side of his jaw, contemplating the new layout of the board.

After checking to make sure Neal didn’t have any serious injuries—the worst was some bruising over his ribs in the form of bootprints—Eames had very firmly pointed him in the direction of the bathroom. The water was hot and there were some ridiculously expensive-looking shampoos and soaps in the walk-in shower, so Neal took his time washing up. He felt grimy enough, sitting in the midst of all that luxury, and it was a relief to wash out the filth and blood that came from getting the shit kicked out of you.

He’d eventually stepped out of the shower to find his clothes missing: replaced with a neat pile of high-quality garments, the tags still attached. He’d checked the bathroom door—still innocently locked—and shook his head with a grin. He wasn’t surprised that the clothes all fit him perfectly.

When he’d emerged from the bathroom at last, he was greeted with a plate of finger sandwiches and scones, a cup of tea and a rather restless Eames. Neal had nearly tripped over himself thanking the man, but Eames had waved it off and told him to repay him with a Scrabble match. Apparently, all of the games he played against Arthur ended in semantic arguments.

As if summoned by Neal’s wandering thoughts, the sound of the apartment door being opened sent an unexpected jolt of fear down the boy’s spine. He sat up sharply, looking at Eames with wide eyes. The thief shook his head easily.

“In here, Arthur.”

The footsteps against the hardwood floor stopped suddenly, a heavy silence weighing in the room. Neal barely dared to turn around.

Arthur looked younger than Neal expected him to be. He was in his early twenties, built slim and lithe. Black hair was immaculately slicked back, and he wore a sharp three-piece suit in light grey, a subdued tie done in a Windsor knot at his throat. He had a thin black briefcase in one hand and a quizzical, calculating look in his eyes. They had that same intense quality that was present in Eames’.

“What’s going on?”

“Give us a moment, Neal, will you?” Eames murmured, rising from his seat. He crossed the room to Arthur’s side, tucking a hand around the shorter man’s hip and steering him in the direction of the kitchen. The intimate gesture did not pass by Neal, who twisted his hands together in his lap and tried to ignore the fact he was horribly, terribly out of place.

The problem with adult-types was that they often underestimated the hearing of those younger than them. Neal picked at the scrapes on his palms, trying to ignore the quiet voices from the other room.

“What is this?” Arthur asked, low and a little confused.

“That’s the boy I was telling you about. The one from La Guardia.”

“Alright, so I know where you found him. But why is he here?”

Neal levered himself off the couch, wandering across the sitting room in an attempt to distance himself from the conversation. He didn’t feel offended, really. Just resigned, and that he was intruding on lives he was not meant to be involved in. He shoved his hands into the pockets of the soft sweatpants Eames had procured for him.

“He’s in trouble. I told him that if he ever needed anything he could come here.”

The Bacon painting from before looked even more striking in the fading light that shone through the windows. Neal stood in front of it, studying the details; the attention to the brush strokes and color. It was an incredibly good copy.

“Eames.” Arthur’s voice was gentle, patient. “I know you like him. But however much of yourself you see there, whatever you’re thinking—you can’t keep him.”

“Arthur!” Eames exclaimed, chiding and exasperated. “He doesn’t have anywhere else to go. He saw a Trinitario gang hit, and they know who he is. It isn’t safe for him to be on the street right now.”

Neal blinked as a bit of fading at the corner of the painting caught his attention. He leaned in, eyes growing huge as he saw the cracked paint and remnants of aging.

“Holy _crap_.”

The words had the effect of silencing all sound in the room. Neal hardly noticed, unable to contain his glee as he looked over his shoulder at the two men.

“This is an original, isn’t it? This is an actual Francis Bacon painting.”

Arthur raised an eyebrow. The tense set of his shoulders relaxed, just a fraction, and Neal caught Eames glancing at the other man.

“You know your post-war British painters.”

Neal nodded, ducking his head, suddenly shy. “Yeah. I…I go to the art museums a lot.”

There were a few moments of quiet. Eames murmured, “Arthur,” and Arthur sighed, abruptly rubbing his hand over his face.

“Well, I’m making dinner anyway, so you may as well stay for that. Besides, I always make too much pasta.”

Looking at Arthur, Neal couldn’t believe for a second that the man did many things that weren’t carefully calculated out. He stammered his thanks, watching as a rakish grin curled Eames’ lips. The thief leaned over, pressing a quick kiss to the side of Arthur’s mouth, and the fond eye-roll he garnered in response spoke of a long familiarity.

Glancing over at Neal as Arthur loosened his tie and went about preparing dinner, Eames winked.

 

* * *

 

Dinner was chicken parmigiana served over fettuccine, and it was quite possibly the most delicious thing Neal had ever tasted. There was also a loaf of freshly-warmed focaccia, a mix of grilled vegetables, and slices of pear served up in a dish. It was beautifully prepared, and he didn’t even bother trying to hide his awe when Arthur waved them over to the table.

Neal did, however, watch. He’d never eaten such a meal before. So he studied Arthur, who ate his meal with concise motions, cutting his piece of chicken with sharp, precise strokes. He studied Eames, who seemed to have some kind of proper upbringing drilled into him: napkin folded carefully in his lap, elbows off the table. Neal tried to mimic them as much as possible while still enjoying the incredible spread of food, adjusting his grip on his knife to mirror Arthur; holding his forearms just above the table like Eames.

Surprisingly, conversation was not as uncomfortable as he’d thought it would be.

“So, Bacon, hm?”

Neal nodded, taking the time to swallow his food and wipe his mouth as he’d seen Eames do before replying. He couldn’t help the feeling of inferiority that plagued him, sitting between two obviously brilliant people. Something drove him to prove himself—to Arthur in particular. And if there was something that Neal paid any attention to at all, it was art.

“The Met had an exhibit of British painters from the 1900s a couple months ago. They had Bacon, Freud, Auerbach—a few lesser-known artists like David Carr, too. I didn’t really like most of Bacon’s work, but he has a distinctive style.”

Eames raised an eyebrow, swirling the wine in his glass. He and Arthur were sharing a bottle of Chianti.

“Why did you think that’s an original?”

The question was honestly curious, but Neal sensed some kind of deeper reason. There was something between Arthur and Eames, some unspoken messages conveyed through look and body language alone. It was a dialect Neal wasn’t yet able to translate.

“The cracking of the paint near the edges of the frame, and the weathering of the canvas beneath. It—” he hesitated, suddenly unsure. “ _Is_ it just a copy?”

There was something like triumph in Eames’ eyes when he leaned back in his chair, sipping his wine. He shook his head.

“No, it isn’t. It’s the original.”

Neal cast an awestruck glance at the painting hanging in the sitting room, visible from the kitchen table. “Some of the pieces at the Met were for sale. I don’t think any of the Bacons went for less than thirty million.”

Across from him, Arthur snorted.

“They’re only expensive if you actually buy them.”

Neal blinked. He turned to Eames, mouth gaping open. The man had a smug smirk on his face that said everything that needed to be before Neal even asked.

“You _didn’t_ ,” he blurted, caught somewhere between wonder and horror. On the one hand, Eames had stolen a work of art. On the other hand—Eames had stolen a work of _art_. The idea of actually owning something so precious made a spark of envious admiration kindle in Neal’s chest. He’d stolen things before, but to steal something so grand was like the holiest form of sacrilege.

Eames grinned, eyes dancing.

“It was Arthur’s birthday.”

“Which I spent avoiding Interpol agents,” Arthur added pointedly. His tone was tart but the look in his eyes was fond, the exchange clearly a familiar one as Eames turned to him in mock-resentment.

“I could always take it back, if you don’t like it.”

“Touch my painting and die, Mr. Eames.”

Eames’ grin widened. His fingertips brushed the backs of Arthur’s knuckles in an easy, affectionate gesture. Neal tilted his head at the two of them, the CIA agent and the thief.

“How did you meet?” he asked. The question seemed safe enough, according to all the television shows Neal had been stuck watching at the various homes he’d been assigned. The meal was mostly over, plates pushed back, so Neal propped his elbow on the table, resting his cheek in his hand.

Eames chuckled. “I wasn’t always a thief, you know.”

“Yes, you were,” Arthur said.

“Alright, I was,” Eames admitted. “But in a more proper fashion. I worked with the British Special Forces; we were doing a joint operation with the CIA involving new training technology.” He cast Arthur a fond look. “Arthur swept me off my feet.”

Arthur raised his eyebrows.

“I shot you.”

“Well, yes. But only in—” An odd look flitted across Eames’ face, barely there long enough for Neal to catch it, “—the training exercise. It wasn’t permanent.”

“He was wearing six-inch heels and an evening gown at the time,” Arthur confided. Neal blinked, trying to imagine Eames in a dress and heels. His brain seemed to be working in slow motion, his stomach full and body warm and relaxed for the first time in what seemed like years. He listened to the two men bicker, sleepy and sated and content.

“And I looked bloody amazing in them, I’ll have you know.”

“You looked like my high school guidance counselor.”

“That was the point, wasn’t it?”

There were more words, quiet laughter and the clink of wine glasses, low voices speaking. Neal tried to follow the conversation, but the feeling of comfortable safety beckoned him toward slumber. After a time he felt gentle hands lifting him from the table—when did he slump over?—and carrying him from the kitchen.

“I suppose he can stay the night,” Arthur’s voice murmured from above his head. Neal mumbled incoherently as he was laid gently onto the couch, a soft blanket draped over his shoulders.

“You like him.”

“Don’t start.”

Careful fingers smoothed the hair away from Neal’s eyes, comforting and kind, and that was the last thing he remembered before sleep claimed him.

 

* * *

 

Mashed strawberries spread on a silver platter. Dark wine staining oyster-colored carpet. Lipstick smeared on an ash-grey collar; tomatoes strewn on a slab of steel.

A man’s face exploding outward, bone and brain matter splattering all over, body hitting the concrete with a sickeningly wet thud; blood pooling in a puddle that spread outward like a wave, washing over Neal, drowning him, choking him in red and—

“Neal!”

Neal awoke with a strangled cry.

A careful hand caught the instinctive swing he lashed out with, fingers curling around his wrist. His t-shirt clung to his back, adrenalin pounding through his veins as he stared up at Arthur’s worried face.

“Neal?”

Neal sucked in air like he was drowning, choking on oxygen as the nightmare faded. He snatched his hand back, drawing his knees up to his chest and wrapping his arms around them, huddling in the corner of the couch.

“I’m okay,” he said hoarsely. “Just a dream.”

The apartment was still dark, the edging of sunrise just barely creeping in through the window curtains. It made the quiet oppressive, stifling, and Neal was pathetically grateful when Arthur reached over to turn on the lamp near the coffee table. A gentle hand rested on his back.

“Tell me about it?”

Neal inhaled a shaky breath, trying to even out his breathing. “It’s not—” he struggled, “I just—I keep seeing it happen. Over and over. There was all that blood, all the—the pieces…”

He pressed his face against his arm, swallowing back bile. He’d seen countless movies, gore and blood and violence galore, and nothing had brought up this reaction in him before.

“This is stupid,” he muttered. “I’m being stupid. Overreacting.”

“You’re not,” Arthur said, his voice firm and kind. “Death is never an easy thing to deal with, Neal.”

Neal snorted. “My parents died when I was six.”

“But were you there to see it?”

He paused. “I…I guess not. I was with the babysitter. Their car crashed.”

Arthur nodded, understanding. “Seeing someone die in front of you is very different from knowing death happens. And the first time is always the hardest. Hopefully, it’ll also be your last.”

Neal picked at the corner of the blanket, staring at the floor. After a while, he glanced up.

“When did you..?”

Arthur hesitated, the compulsion to be truthful fighting a clear war with his desire to not alarm Neal further. But Neal was far from a child, having left his innocence behind on the streets years ago—and Arthur seemed to respect that.

“When I was in the Army,” he said eventually. “Before I was recruited by the CIA. My unit was deployed to Kosovo as part of an effort to keep order, settle things down in the region. It was supposed to be a bloodless operation, but there were still landmines…” He glanced away. “One of my squadmates stepped on one. It…wasn’t pretty.”

Neal nodded, silent. He looked up at Arthur with tired eyes.

“Does it ever get easier?”

Arthur looked back at him with a small, sad smile.

“No, it doesn’t.”

He reached for the edge of the blanket, tucking it under Neal’s chin as he settled back down on the couch.

“Try to sleep some more. Eames won’t be awake for a few more hours at least, and we can have breakfast then.”

Neal nodded, curling up on the soft cushions. He looked up at Arthur with a serious expression on his face.

“I’m sorry your friend died.”

A flicker of surprise flitted across Arthur’s features. His eyes softened, a gentle smile curling his lips as he reached over to turn off the lamp.

“Go to sleep, Neal.”

 

* * *

 

“You’re cheating.”

“Yes, I am.”

Neal glared at Eames, frustrated. The thief’s expression was amused—but not in any way malicious. It took a bit of the wind out of Neal’s sails.

Three cards lay on the coffee table between them, one of them face-up. There were two aces and one queen: Eames would flip them over, shuffle the cards, and tell Neal to find the queen. So far he’d picked out nothing but aces.

“Alright,” Eames allowed, gathering the cards back up. He turned the queen over to face Neal. “Watch.”

Neal wasn’t going to lose track a second time. He kept his eyes intently on the queen, ignoring all else. Eames shuffled the cards, queen tucked behind ace tucked behind ace tucked behind queen tucked behind—

The card slipped up Eames’ sleeve.

Neal’s jaw dropped.

“You—!” He spluttered, infuriated. “It was never there!”

“That’s right!” Eames looked so delighted that Neal couldn’t help but deflate a little. The thief wasn’t pleased about deceiving him—he was pleased Neal had gotten the trick.

“I don’t understand,” Neal said lamely.

Eames chuckled.

“The point is to control the game. Your opponent is never able to win because there is never a chance for him to win. If it makes you feel better,” he added, “It took Arthur five tries to get it.”

“You distracted me with your tongue,” came a sharp call from the bedroom, where Arthur had been holed up all day. “Four tries.”

“All’s fair in love and war! Five.”

“ _Four_ , and could you come here and stop yelling? I think I’ve found what we need.”

Eames raised an eyebrow at Neal, then shrugged, climbing to his feet and heading toward the bedroom. Neal hesitated only a moment before grabbing the four cards and trotting after him.

Like the rest of the apartment, Eames’ and Arthur’s bedroom was tastefully decorated. The walls were painted a warm beige, the room dominated by a large four-post bed and a sturdy oak desk in the corner. Assorted paintings and prints hung around the room: Neal had spent much of the morning guessing which pieces of art in the apartment were real and which were fake. He’d gotten all but three right—one of which was a forgery by Eames himself.

After breakfast, Arthur had retreated to the bedroom to go through the CIA archives and dossiers on the Trinitario gang. Eames was around for a while, but had slipped out for a few hours in order to ‘hear the word on the streets’. He’d returned with disheveled hair, mussed clothes and dirt on his face—the very picture of a common street thug, with a thick New York accent to go with it. After his Arthur-mandated shower he’d taken mercy on Neal’s boredom and pulled out a deck of cards.

“Felipe Prieto,” Arthur announced as they walked into the bedroom. He held out a slim folder, which Eames took and began leafing through. “Current leader of the Trinitarios. He’s the person we need to deal with. The police or the FBI wouldn’t be able to help in this case; they wouldn’t be able to take down a whole gang. The man Neal saw—José Alvarez—is small-time; and just taking him out wouldn’t erase the hit on Neal.”

He cast Neal an apologetic look, seeming to understand the sudden fear that raced down the boy’s spine. The fact that there were people who wanted him dead was laid out, flat and cold and simple, and hearing it in such honest terms chilled him.

Eames flipped through the files as Neal slumped on the end of the bed. He absently reached out to tousle Neal’s hair comfortingly.

“Looks like Prieto fancies himself a bit of a high roller now: only associates with the upper echelon, keeps things clean and neat. You think he’d be open to a deal?”

“You have an idea already?” Arthur didn’t sound too surprised. Eames nodded, laying the folder back on the desk and going over to the walk-in closet. He began rummaging through the hanging clothes.

“What if,” he said, voice muffled, “A very wealthy, very powerful crime lord came to him with sincere apologies that their dealings had crossed? That one of his street runners—a favorite, a protégé even—had just happened to see a Trinitario dealing, but surely something could be arranged to be mutually beneficial without bloodshed?”

Arthur tapped his pen against his jaw, considering.

“You want to pull a Mechane? Do you have an alias that’s well-established enough for that?”

Eames stuck his head out of the closet long enough to shoot Arthur a scathingly insulted look. Arthur’s lips quirked up in a smile, and he raised his hands in a placating gesture.

“Right. Shouldn’t have asked.”

“No, you shouldn’t have,” Eames sniffed. He made a low noise of accomplishment as he found what he’d been looking for, pulling a garment bag from the closet and laying it on the bed. Neal scooted over curiously as he unzipped the front, pulling out a fine-looking suit of dark grey twill. From the desk, Arthur made an embarrassingly high-pitched noise.

“Is that a _Caraceni_?” Arthur choked, voice strangled. He left his laptop in favor of going over to the bed, fingering the fabric of the jacket cuff with something akin to awe as Eames shot him an amused smile.

“You are not allowed to do filthy things to my suit.”

“Don’t be blasphemous,” Arthur said absently. He glanced at Eames, then back at the suit. “This is bespoke, isn’t it? How in _hell_ did you manage to pull off a hand-tailored Caraceni suit? You couldn’t have stolen it.”

“Won a poker bet,” Eames replied with a shrug. “He had an appointment and a one-pair; I had a Titian and two aces up my sleeve.”

Arthur stared at him for a long moment.

“I hate you.”

“You adore me,” Eames corrected. Arthur made a face.

“I tolerate you, at best.”

Eames let out a sad noise, pressing his hand to his heart. Both Neal and Arthur rolled their eyes.

“Can you take care of Neal while I set things up?” Eames asked, back from teasing to serious in the blink of an eye. “I need to get word to Prieto, and finish putting together my own costume. We have a few days, but I’ll be busy for the majority of them.”

Neal blinked as two intent sets of eyes fell on him. He shifted nervously as a slow smile curved Arthur’s lips.

“He’ll need a suit.”

 

* * *

 

Neal officially hated suits.

They were tight and itchy and hot, and the elderly man who measured him had gotten far too touchy with his inseam. Arthur picked something off the rack for him and had it tailored while they waited at the café around the corner. The shirt was a subdued blue; the pants and two-button jacket an austere black.

“I don’t understand how you wear these,” Neal complained, tugging at the collar of his crisp new shirt. One of Arthur’s hands absently reached over to catch his wrist as they walked up the steps of the Met.

“Ready-to-wear will never be as good as custom-made; unfortunately, we don’t have the time to have you fitted bespoke. Now, come on, I told you it would be worth it.”

Neal followed Arthur dubiously beneath the large banners announcing the Met’s latest exhibition: a showing of impressionist works brought over from Europe. The exhibit wasn’t public yet, held back for private viewings before being released to the rabble. Neal knew they didn’t have invitations because Arthur only decided to go while they were on the way back from the tailor’s.

The Met was dim inside, light filtering through thick glass meant to protect centuries-old works of art. It had the quiet air that seemed intrinsic to all museums—and to Neal it felt like home. Central Park and the New York Library were all well and good, but whenever Neal wanted calm, wanted peace, his feet would always take him to the Met.

Used to the thrill that came with sneaking past security—he was thirteen, and the Met’s free entrance cut off at twelve—Neal was a little disoriented as Arthur led him right through the milling crowds of people. A crisp nod and Arthur’s sure steps brought them through the doors, past reception and up the grand stairs to the second floor. A whole section of galleries were cordoned off, with a lone greeter acting as security.

Arthur strolled right up to the man, calm and confident, and Neal did his best to mimic.

“Good afternoon, sirs,” the man said politely. It was the most respectful someone had ever been to Neal. “You’re here for the impressionism exhibit?”

Arthur nodded briefly as the man opened up his guest list.

“Ethan Vauclain. The reservation is for three, but my wife is unable to make it today.”

Neal kept his face carefully schooled into a mask of idle aristocratic boredom. He couldn’t help but smirk a little at the idea of Eames as Arthur’s wife, however.

The greeter cleared his throat awkwardly.

“Ah, Mr. Vauclain, I’m afraid your name isn’t on the guest list.”

A frown creased Arthur’s forehead.

“I know we made the booking a bit late, but it should have been processed by now. Are you sure?”

The man checked through the book again, shaking his head slowly.

“I’m sorry, sir.”

Arthur let out a quiet breath of air, tapping his fingertips contemplatively against the desk.

“I do realize the importance of doing things by the book—” Arthur paused as he caught the eye of a well-dressed woman in the gallery ahead. He smiled, waving to her; she offered him a pretty smile and a wave of her own. He dropped his voice, continuing, “But I would rather not have this become a scene. I have some good friends I’m supposed to be meeting, and I am a man who is never late.”

The greeter glanced back at the woman, then at Arthur again. After a heartbeat, he nodded.

“It was probably just a glitch in the computer system. Go right on in, Mr. Vauclain. Enjoy the exhibition.”

Arthur smiled brilliantly, clapping the man on the shoulder. He steered a rather dumbstruck Neal past the cordon and into the gallery.

“How did you do that?” Neal hissed as soon as they were out of earshot. “Who is Ethan Vauclain? And who was that woman?”

Arthur laughed, guiding him further into the crowd of rich, well-dressed people. Neal’s fingers itched.

“A suit, Neal,” he said, “Is a statement. It’s power and prestige, wealth and confidence. People assume you know what you’re doing if you’re wearing the right clothing: from a police uniform to a valet jacket to a suit. As for Ethan—” he shrugged. “I just made him up.”

Neal stared at him. “And the woman?”

Arthur chuckled, glancing over his shoulder at said lady.

“No idea. But it’s terribly impolite to not respond when someone waves at you.”

Neal couldn’t help it then, bursting out into laughter. The brilliance of the idea was astonishingly simple, to play on social expectations and standards, and it’s delightfully devious. He grinned up at Arthur as the man ruffled his hair affectionately, ignoring the rather bemused looks from their high-class companions at his outburst. When Arthur’s phone buzzed in his pocket he turned Neal around, motioning him away toward the display of paintings with a smile still on his lips.

Neal was instantly captivated.

“Yes?”

Raindrops pattered softly on a slow-flowing stream. The smell of loam was rich in the air, the damp earth soft and malleable, soon soaking into mud.

“Didn’t you get the message I left? I need to take the next few days off. Since we weren’t planning on going under this week—”

Reflections glittered off the water’s surface like crystal, like diamonds; a mirror of reality but somehow better. The circles in the stream made by raindrops spread outward, bouncing off each other in a nonsensical pattern that was still connected together.

“I realize that, Cobb. I’ll be back next Monday. I just have something I need to take care of first. And don’t even try that with me—you just took two months off to help Mal settle in with Phillipa.”

Across the creek was an embankment lined with trees, leaves swaying gently beneath the weight of the rain. A fallen log was wedged beneath the piles of silt, one end bobbing in the water.

“Of course not, I haven’t seen Eames in months.”

Neal tore his gaze away from the painting, the familiar name a sharp jab at his attention. He found Arthur standing a few paces away with his phone pressed to his ear, a mildly annoyed look on the man’s face.

It was only after a few seconds that Neal’s brain processed the lie.

“Just because we used to see each other doesn’t mean I keep track of his current whereabouts. So, no, he’s not here, and no, that’s not why I’m missing work. I’ll see you on Monday, alright? Give Mal my best.”

Neal tilted his head curiously to the side as Arthur slipped the phone back into his pocket. A wry smile curved Arthur’s mouth, and he answered before Neal could ask.

“That was my boss. He’s the one who first recruited me into…the CIA. He and his wife just had their first child.”

“He doesn’t know about you and Eames?”

Arthur’s hand settled on Neal’s shoulder as they continued through the gallery—which was a good thing, because Neal was hopelessly distracted and would have run into things otherwise. Impressionism was about capturing the moment, putting the essence of a feeling onto canvas rather than a picture, and it was something he’d never seen before. He couldn’t help but stare.

“Cobb likes to do things by the book, and he likes to make sure the people he cares about are safe. He takes his job very seriously, and Eames…well, we both knew Eames before he became a full-time thief. But he is a thief now, and wanted in several countries, and if Cobb knew he was here…” Arthur shrugged. “I figure he doesn’t need to know any details about my personal life. It’s better for everyone involved.”

Neal nodded. Admittedly, he was only half paying attention, enraptured by the portrait of a delicately graceful ballerina in pink.

Arthur made polite chatter with the assembled guests, obviously indulgent as he followed Neal from room to room. People—especially women—swooned over the well-dressed boy with the bright blue eyes, but Neal hardly heard them, floating in a world of quick brush strokes and ambient lighting.

That was the day Neal fell in love with the Impressionist movement.

And perhaps, a little, with suits.

 

* * *

 

Clark Tabernackle was a dark-eyed, stern-faced Englishman who ran one of the most high-profile fencing rings along the Atlantic Ocean. His hair was black, slicked back, and he walked with the air of a man well-aware of his own power. He had a cherrywood walking cane inscribed with silver: a concession to his one weakness, the limp from an old bullet wound in his thigh.

Neal was impressed.

“That’s _amazing_ ,” he murmured reverently as ‘Clark’ took a turn around the apartment, moving with the slow gait of a man who never hurried for anyone. He received a quickly flashed grin in reply, the mask falling away for an instant to reveal a pleased Eames beneath.

“It’s all in the mannerisms. Different looks mean nothing if you still act the same. Granted, the costume helps a great deal.”

“I never have liked you in black,” Arthur murmured, emerging from the study with a slim gun in his hand. He held it out to Eames, who dutifully tucked it into a holster at his ankle.

His second night in the apartment, Neal had been moved from the couch in the sitting room to the futon in the study. The room was neatly divided between shelves of books and a row of locked file cabinets—Arthur’s files from work, which Neal politely refrained from picking the locks of and resolutely Did Not Touch—and an array of neatly-stored art supplies belonging to Eames. There were packages of clay, rows upon rows of paints and brushes, canvases and frames and what looked to be a half-finished replica of Bruegel’s ‘Netherlandish Proverbs’. There was also an array of different clothing in the closet, from a woman’s burqa to the richly-colored robes of a Buddhist monk.

“Do you think there’s going to be trouble tonight?” Neal asked, something clenching in his stomach as he watched Eames hide the pistol away. The thief shook his head.

“Things will have to have gotten pretty badly pear-shaped if I end up actually needing this. The best con is one where force isn’t necessary. But if it is,” he shrugged, “I’ll take care of things. And Arthur will be there to back us up.”

Arthur was dressed in a sleek tuxedo for the evening, a hat tucked under his arm completing the image of a limo driver. Neal and Eames both had one-way radios fitted beneath the collars of their dress shirts, which Arthur would monitor over the course of their dinner meeting.

Eames checked the expensive probably-real Breguet watch on his wrist, running his fingers through his recently-dyed hair. He also had a pocket watch chain clipped to his belt, something that Neal found odd but didn’t try to question.

“We’ll need to leave soon if we want to make it on time through traffic. Any final thoughts?”

Arthur nodded. He reached out, hand tucking behind Eames’ neck, pulling him close and pressing their foreheads together.

“Be careful.”

Eames smiled, something soft and fond in his eyes.

“I always am.”

Neal studied his shiny new black shoes, feeling like he was intruding. He almost yelped in surprise when Arthur’s arm tucked around his shoulders, pulling him into a hug. It was only then he realized the tension in the man’s shoulders, the anxiety thrumming through him.

“Eames will keep you safe,” Arthur said, quiet and reassuring. “So you make sure he doesn’t do anything stupid, alright?”

Neal smiled up at him as Eames made a disgruntled sound of protest.

“Alright.”

The Kurumazushi was a fantastically expensive Japanese restaurant just down the way from Central Park. It was small, exclusive, and ready to cater to private business meetings between two very powerful crime lords. Neal’s stomach tied itself into an elaborate knot as they drove down 47th, twisting his hands together. This was it. The continuation of his breathing all depended on tonight.

Arthur pulled the limo up to the curb, eyes watching them intently in the rearview mirror.

“Good luck.”

 

* * *

 

The food was eccentric and foreign, the room was stiflingly small, there were two well-armed Trinitario thugs standing right outside the door and Neal was quickly approaching the kind of nervousness that contributed toward puking all over the table.

Felipe Prieto was an older man with greying brown hair and darkly intent eyes. He wore an expensive suit that didn’t nearly cover all his gang tattoos—most noticeably the ‘DPL’ on the middle fingers of his left hand, and the ‘3NI’ on his right—and held himself with the air of someone trying to appear well-mannered. An expensive pen was tucked in his front shirt pocket, visible when he unbuttoned his suit jacket.

“So, this is your protégé? It seems he knows the value of silence.”

Neal hesitated with a piece of nigiri halfway to his mouth. The night’s conversation had been mostly between Prieto and Eames, Neal offering the occasional insight when they chatted about art. Eames’ first impression of the gang leader had been correct: Prieto was dying to be recognized as one of the elite. He chose the head of the table, seating Eames and Neal on either side of himself, and spoke to great length about certain highbrow areas he’d obviously researched in depth. Eames indulged him, letting Prieto rave about the latest operas showing at the Dicapo and the recent rising Broadway stars, but there was an amused glint in his eyes.

A small smile quirked Eames’ lips. He dabbed at his mouth with a cloth napkin.

“Indeed he does. I only discovered Stephen a few months ago, but he already has a good grasp of what it takes to make it in the world.”

Prieto’s eyes were sharp, calculating, and Neal forced himself to continue chewing the bits of rice and salmon in his mouth. He barely tasted it, focusing all his attention on appearing nonchalant even as his stomach did somersaults.

“You know, I was told his name was Neal.”

Eames waved an easy hand even as Neal’s heart skipped a couple of terrified beats.

“That is his middle name; the one he uses while running business for me.” Eames smiled, “But there should be no facades between men like us, yes?”

“No,” Prieto agreed, some of the suspicion fading from his eyes. “There should not.”

“He’s still a little raw,” Eames explained, sounding faintly apologetic. For once, Neal didn’t mind being talked about as though he wasn’t present. “But the potential is there. Barring any inopportune circumstances, I expect he’ll take over the business eventually.”

“It would certainly be a tragedy to lose such a promising young man,” Prieto mused, his tone sharp-edged. He looked at Neal. “Tell me, young Stephen, is there anyone out there who could replace you?”

Neal paused. He took a few moments, carefully considering the man in front of him: Prieto with his delusions of grandeur, his arrogance and his desire to be surprised.

“No.”

Prieto’s eyebrows rose. He chuckled, turning toward Eames as he poured himself some more sake. The front of his suit jacket fell open as he shifted.

“And why do you think that?”

As the man’s fingers closed around the flask of sake, his attention absent and diverted, Neal leaned forward. He slipped his hand around the table, out of Prieto’s peripheral vision—and, as careful as a surgeon, lifted the pen from the gang leader’s pocket. It took only an instant and for a few breathless moments he was sure he was going to be caught, but as Prieto poured he gave no indication of having sensed the theft. Neal’s heart pounded in his chest, the thrill of a successful heist under such duress singing through him.

Even Eames’ slightly wide-eyed look at him was unable to douse the sense of accomplishment.

Neal waited until Prieto turned back before deliberately holding the pen up between them. He set it down on the table next to Prieto’s hand, looking into the man’s startled gaze.

“Because I’m the best.”

For a few seconds, there was silence. Neal’s heartbeat pounded in his ears.

And then Prieto laughed.

It was a delighted, honest sound, and the gang leader was unabashedly grinning as he picked up the pen. He looked down at it, shaking his head ruefully, and glanced at Eames with a broad smile.

“Talent like his should definitely not be wasted, Mr. Tabernackle.”

“No,” Eames agreed, something unreadable in his eyes when he looked at Neal. “It shouldn’t be.”

Still chuckling, Prieto reached over to press the pen into Neal’s hand. The boy looked up at him in surprise, stilling when he caught sight of the intensity behind Prieto’s amused demeanor.

“You can keep it.”

He wasn’t talking about the pen.

Neal smiled woodenly and sat back, light-headed and dizzy, to finish his meal.

 

* * *

 

Something was different.

Neal noticed it first at breakfast, when he emerged bleary-eyed and bedraggled from the study. He’d fallen asleep curled against Eames in the limo the previous night, the nerve-wracking nature of the evening taking its toll. The knotted tangle of anxiety in his chest was finally lifted, leaving him drained and exhausted and relieved.

He noticed it in the serious sets of Eames’ and Arthur’s faces when he wandered out, the two of them talking quietly over eggs and toast. When they saw him the expressions instantly vanished, replaced with smiles that seemed too much like masks for Neal’s comfort.

“How does it feel to be a free man again?” Eames asked, eyes light as he laid a plate of food on the table in front of Neal. The boy blinked at him, sleepy and bemused.

“Nice.”

Eames chuckled and sat back, allowing him more time to wake up. The thief reached over to steal the Arts section of the Times from Arthur, their fingers brushing against each other. Arthur gave it up with a modicum of grace, though he did murmur that the Arts section was not a ‘To Steal’ list.

He also glanced over at Neal and exchanged a brief, significant look with Eames, and that was when the unease clawed its way back into Neal’s chest.

He tried to make himself scarce, wondering if he’d done something wrong, but the attempt didn’t work. Arthur dragged him out of the study for a game of chess, which Neal admittedly fell instantly in love with. Eames puttered about with his Bruegel forgery, paint smeared on his hands as he pointed out the importance of reproducing the imperfections as well as the perfections. Lunch was delivery, take-out from the Thai restaurant they’d ordered from a few nights ago, and without asking, Neal’s favorite dish appeared in the bag.

It was mundane. It was wonderful: new experiences joined with old comforts; but Neal couldn’t help but feel as though he was waiting for the other shoe to drop. The quiet conversations—low enough that even he couldn’t hear, quickly ceased when he wandered over—and the odd looks exchanged between Arthur and Eames continued throughout the day. And if they refused to acknowledge it, despite the regret that coiled in his stomach, Neal was clinical enough to do so. He knew what was wrong.

His time was up.

He wasn’t supposed to be there anymore.

The two men had done everything for him. They had quite literally saved his life, allowing him into their home and their lives; risking themselves to help him. They’d fed him and clothed him, showed him a glimpse into a life beyond petty thievery, and now that same generosity was crippling them. The kindness that led them to take him in was the same compassion that kept them from kicking him out.

And Neal was many things, but he would never let himself be seen as ungrateful.

The next day, the sixth since he’d first thrown himself at Eames’ mercy, Neal made sure to wake up early. He moved quietly around the study, arranging things the way they had been before; taking nothing that wasn’t his to begin with. He folded the clothes neatly, leaving them on the futon, and pulled on what he’d been wearing when he arrived. The ratty old t-shirt and torn jeans felt foreign after the fine clothing he’d been given during the week. Neal laid the suit atop the pile with no small amount of regret.

Then he grabbed a medium-sized canvas, an array of oil paint and brushes, and got to work.

The sun was just rising outside, the sky tinted blue-pink and the air crisp when Neal quietly pulled the balcony doors open. He worked fast: capturing the gradient hues in the sky, laying down the lush greenery of Central Park below. He didn’t bother mixing colors beforehand, just applying them directly to the canvas and letting the eye blend them together. The balcony balustrade and set of chairs came last, a personal touch that made the image more than a painting of Central Park: made it personal, from their perspective, from their lives.

It was nearly seven by the time Neal finished, close to when Arthur would wake up. He hastily put the supplies back, leaving the painting still-drying on the easel. He didn’t sign it, but he did leave a message scrawled on the back of the canvas before slipping quietly from the apartment, trying to ignore the tight knot in his throat.

 _‘Thank you, for everything.’_

It was the first and last original painting Neal ever did.

 

* * *

 

It didn’t take long for them to find him.

In fact, it took Eames and Arthur just three hours, twenty-seven minutes and two subway stops to find him.

Neal sat on one of the gallery benches at the Brooklyn Museum, quietly considering one of the paintings on the wall. It was a beach scene of Long Island, families wading into the water in early 1900s garments, long dresses and bonnets and barely any skin showing. The colors were vivid, capturing the image and tones without sharp outlining.

“Glackens, hm?”

Neal looked up, not terribly surprised by the familiar presence that sat down on the bench next to him. The hope that the Brooklyn wasn’t as obvious of a choice as the Met or the Guggenheim hadn’t detracted from the fact that Arthur was CIA—and if the agency did nothing else well, they at least knew how to track a person down.

A glance over his shoulder revealed Eames standing at the entrance of the room, leaning against the wall. There was something tense in the set of his shoulders, the knit of his brows, and Neal looked quickly away.

“For a realism painter, I always thought he had rather distinctive impressionist leanings,” Arthur commented. “A lot of Renoir in his style.”

Neal shrugged.

“That’s why I like it.”

A brief smile touched Arthur’s lips. Neal wondered when he had become so predictable.

They sat in silence for a while, Neal staring at his hands while Arthur studied the painting. The uncertainty from the previous day sat low in the pit of his stomach, gnawing at him like an unfilled hunger. He didn’t know what Arthur wanted. Neal had left, he hadn’t taken anything, and he’d tried to leave them something for their troubles. It wasn’t as though he had anything of true value to offer.

“We were worried about you.”

Neal twitched in surprise. He shot Arthur a quick look, but he couldn’t read the expression on the man’s face. He dropped his gaze back to his fingers, slotting them together.

“I’ve lived on my own for a long time, you know.”

“We do know that,” Arthur acknowledged, calm and gentle. “It doesn’t change the fact.”

Neal ducked his head. He hadn’t wanted to make anyone worry.

“Now that the Trinitario thing is over, after all you did for me, I figured…”

“You figured what?”

Neal let out a low breath of air, a lick of anger coiling in his belly as he turned to face Arthur fully. His lips twisted.

“I’m not an idiot, Arthur. All day yesterday, you—I could tell you wanted me to leave. It’s okay. I’ll be okay. You don’t have to worry about me.”

Arthur looked genuinely surprised, his forehead furrowing in a frown.

“You thought we wanted you to go?”

Neal blinked. He stared at Arthur, lamely, all of his built-up defenses and rationalizations of his feelings from the last twenty-four hours crumbling into pieces around him. He hadn’t been unwanted. He’d misunderstood.

“Wasn’t that…” he stammered, “The way you both were acting, I thought…”

“You _git_.”

Neal looked up as Eames appeared at Arthur’s side. The Brit’s arms were folded across his chest, and the anger Neal had thought he’d seen there wasn’t anger at all—it was fear, only now starting to fade. Something like guilt kicked low in his gut.

“Eames,” Arthur warned, without heat and without looking up. He offered Neal a rather rueful smile, his voice kind. “Neal, we didn’t want you to leave. We were trying to figure out how to ask you to stay.”

And, just like that, all of the oxygen in the room seemed to disappear.

“You—What?” Neal choked, feeling suddenly dizzy. He stared at Arthur in helpless confusion. “You do? Why?”

Arthur’s smile widened, quirking up at the corners. “It isn’t enough that you’re an incredibly intelligent, talented young man?”

“The apartment felt empty.”

Both Neal and Arthur blinked, looking up at Eames’ sudden input. The Brit frowned.

“Without you,” he clarified in a low mutter. “The apartment feels empty without you.”

Neal stared at him for a beat longer, and after a few seconds the stiffness in Eames’ posture faded. The fear and worry was gone, replaced with something wistful and almost sad. He moved to the front of the bench, crouching in front of Neal.

“We know you can take care of yourself,” he said softly. “You’ve done it for years, and that’s no small feat. You’re bright, intelligent, and you have the potential to accomplish anything you set your mind to. We know you have the capability to do all of this on your own.” Eames glanced away, briefly, before looking back. His eyes were soft and unguarded, and it made Neal catch his breath. “But what we’re saying is, if you want it, you don’t have to.”

Neal swallowed hard, struggling to fight the heat welling behind his eyes. He looked between the two, blinking fast and trying hard to keep from falling apart in front of them. It didn’t particularly work that well.

“You really want me to stay?” he asked, hating the tremor that ran through his voice.

Arthur smiled in response, and laid a gentle hand on his shoulder.

“We want you to come home."

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> **Art referenced:**   
> [Francis Bacon: Study for the Head of George Dyer](http://pics.livejournal.com/cradle_song/pic/000bckd0)   
> [Gustave Caillebotte: L'Yerres, pluie](http://pics.livejournal.com/cradle_song/pic/000b8era)   
> [Edgar Degas: Dancer with a Bouquet of Flowers](http://pics.livejournal.com/cradle_song/pic/000b91ee)   
> [Pieter Bruegel: Netherlandish Proverbs](http://pics.livejournal.com/cradle_song/pic/000bbg18)   
> [William Glackens: Bathing at Bellport, Long Island](http://pics.livejournal.com/cradle_song/pic/000ba98w)
> 
> Also posted at [Livejournal](http://windswept-fic.livejournal.com/38929.html).


	2. Who I Am Today

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Arthur and Eames adopt a kid and raise that kid into Neal Caffrey.

Living with Arthur and Eames was a little like riding a rollercoaster.

There were the peaks: uphill climbs of anticipation, the knowledge that something incredible was happening. Reaching the top of accomplishment, and then the plunging dives; heart-in-your-throat bursts of exhilaration tangled with helpless fear. There were twists and turns and through it all, the thrill of experiencing something novel and wonderful.

They set down rules, of course. Neal didn’t expect to be in such an extraordinary situation without it having some downsides. Having to actually show up to school was the worst: Neal considered it a waste of time when he was feeling magnanimous, and wanted to blow it up when he wasn’t. Arthur pulled strings to get him admitted to Calhoun, an exclusive little school near the Hudson. It was close enough to the apartment that he could take his bike there—blue and shiny and new—and while the desire to ditch and wander over to Museum Row instead was a daily struggle, he found himself almost always attending. When he didn’t, Arthur would always know; and then he would make that non-judgmental-but-nevertheless-disappointed face at him.

Neal hated that face.

Eames seemed to share his aversion of higher education, but he always agreed with Arthur on the subject of Neal’s schooling—although he did confide to Neal that as soon as he was able to forge school records on his own, he could drop out. Arthur had not been pleased to learn of that conversation.

He’d been even less pleased when he’d finished making dinner to find Eames showing Neal how to forge his CIA badge. But he hadn’t stopped them, which said something about his own view of the rules.

The interplay between Eames and Arthur never ceased to fascinate Neal. The two men seemed like complete opposites on paper: a CIA agent and a thief; a lawmaker and a lawbreaker. Yet Arthur never questioned the less-than-legal skills Eames was teaching Neal; and when the two were together, they fit so seamlessly it was hard to imagine one without the other. They bickered and they snarked and they argued the points of Aristotle versus Plato, but the surface tension was only ever that: a surface. Neal knew them well enough to see beyond that—to see the live wire connection that bound the two together.

It was more than a little humbling to know that link now included him as well.

Eames and Arthur made sure he was never alone: if one was gone on a job, the other wouldn’t be. If Arthur had to be called away, Eames made sure to cancel whatever business he might have had. When Eames was out of the country stealing things and causing chaos, Arthur limited himself to strictly office-hours work.

Arthur taught Neal French and Japanese and how to shoot a gun, though he didn’t push very hard because of Neal’s aversion of the things. He showed him how to hotwire a car and the difference between Zegna and Dunhill, took him to the latest exhibitions at the Met and introduced him to the wonders of wine and caviar. Over late-night dinners he explained the workings of the American judicial system, what would get you caught and what policemen and FBI agents and Interpol looked for when profiling suspects.

Eames tried to teach Neal German and Swahili, which was when Neal discovered that Eames was a fantastically horrible teacher. Things came naturally to the thief, so he didn’t entirely comprehend how to instruct someone else. Once Neal got the basics down, however, Eames was able to expand exponentially on his knowledge. He honed Neal’s lockpicking and pickpocketing and broke down the basics of an average person’s wants and needs so better to manipulate them. Through him, Neal was introduced to forgers and thieves and fences and fraudsters, and it wasn’t long before he knew both the high-class side of New York as well as the city’s seamy underbelly. With diagrams and blueprints Eames showed him how to avoid security cameras, how to pinpoint the best route to a target and the importance of avoiding squeaky tile while wearing sneakers.

Arthur showed Neal the rules.

Eames showed him how to break them.

And through it all, inexplicably, Neal found himself remembering what it was like to be part of a family. The study was cleared out of file cabinets and storage to make room for a wardrobe, for his clothes and his books, a space to call solely his own. Eames made him breakfast in the morning when he stumbled out bleary-eyed and half-asleep; Arthur helped him with his homework after school. He settled into the kind of rhythm that only came with knowing others would be there for you, finally believing he had a place and people to call home.

Then, just a few weeks shy of his fifteenth birthday, everything came crashing down.

 

* * *

 

Neal never took any of his friends back to the apartment.

Admittedly, part of the reason for that was the fact Neal didn’t really have many friends. It wasn’t for lack of opportunity—the half of his classmates who didn’t adore him envied him instead—but simply that Neal didn’t _like_ anyone enough. Most of his peers were self-absorbed, clueless or just plain dumb, and none were at all interesting. Neal knew how to get them to do what he wanted, of course, and even teachers had a tendency to fawn over him—but he saw them as little more than means to an end. They were fun in their own way, and he did have a few groups he would hang out with on occasion, but no one he really connected with.

No one he trusted.

Neal wasn’t used to having a family. Now that he had Arthur and Eames, he was fiercely protective of their bond. He never invited anyone over because he didn’t think anyone yet had the right to intrude on their home. It was a place and an idea that he guarded keenly, leery even to put the address on school forms.

Roger helpfully opened the door when he spotted Neal wheeling his bike toward the apartment lobby: now a part of their after-school ritual. The concierge had warmed up to Neal, eventually, forgiving him his uncouth ways as it became clear the boy was there to stay.

Also, Eames had made him apologize.

‘A concierge,’ he had said, ‘Is the God of a block of flats. He sees all and he knows all, and you Do Not Piss Him Off.’

Roger was one of Neal’s first examples of keeping friends with those who were in a position of power. Eames always chatted with the man, and so Eames always knew what was happening in the apartment building at any given time. If the Bauers were fighting again or the Sherwoods broke another water pipe, Eames was one of the first to know. It wasn’t that Roger was a gossip—just that Eames had taken the time to insinuate himself as someone the concierge could talk to. And when an unfortunate pigeon tore through the screen door of their balcony one day, Roger made sure someone was there to fix it within the hour.

The same principles applied to the barista at the coffee shop down the street, who would always add extra cinnamon to Neal’s chai, and to the man who worked at the news stand on the corner of 110th and Manhattan who tossed in a free pack of gum with Neal’s daily purchase of the Times. People—especially those working service jobs—liked to be treated as people, and they liked familiar, friendly faces. It didn’t take a lot of effort to gain someone’s favor: a smile, a laugh, asking how their day was.

“Anything interesting happen today?” Neal asked as he wheeled his bike toward the back storage room just off the lobby. Roger helped him with the door, holding it open while Neal locked his bike to the rack located inside. The lights in the building had been on the fritz again, and a pair of electricians were working over in the corner.

“The Darzis’ chihuahua got out again,” Roger reported with a twitch of his lips. “Aside from that, things have been quiet.” He tilted his head. “Mr. Eames is due back today, is he not?”

Neal nodded, unable to hide his grin. Some jobs Eames didn’t tell him about, but the recent one was a little heist in Florence that involved a very good replica of Verrocchio’s ‘David’. He’d seen the cast before Eames left for Italy—the attention to detail was astounding.

“His flight should land in an hour or so. He promised he’d bring me back something, too.”

Never mind that when Eames promised a gift, it was usually something he’d stolen.

Roger waved Neal into one of the elevators, holding it open as one of the electricians trotted after him. The week Eames had been gone, Neal had spent his time going over an intellectual challenge the thief had left him with: apparently, Eames wanted to steal The Last Supper.

Despite the fact it was a mural.

Neal was watching the elevator numbers tick up, pondering the merits of laser cutters versus precision waterjets, when the unmistakable weight of a gun muzzle pressed into the small of his back.

“Take me to Eames.”

 

* * *

 

 _He has a gun._

 _He knows who I am. He knows who Eames is._

 _He has a gun._

 _He knows we live here. He knows my schedule._

 _He has a **gun** —_

“He’s not here,” Neal rasped. He refused to let the fear choking his throat be heard in his voice, shunting that scared part of him somewhere deep at the bottom of his stomach. His mind raced as he cobbled together the pieces of information he knew about his assailant.

 _He knows Eames. His accent is British, from around Yorkshire—he probably worked with Eames before, maybe with the SAS. He knows who I am, which means he’s gotten past all of the security Arthur put around our identities. He knows where we live and what my schedule is, so he’s been watching for a while. He’s smart. Patient. Knows how to handle a gun. Knows how to crack CIA-level defenses._

A heavy hand landed between his shoulder blades as the elevator reached the fifteenth floor.

“Then let’s go wait for him to get home, shall we?”

Neal licked his lips as he was pushed inexorably from the elevator, holding his arms carefully away from his sides. Not that he had any weapons on him: he knew how to use them, certainly, but both Arthur and Eames were leery about him actually handling them.

He never thought there would be an instance when he disagreed with them.

Neal moved agonizingly slowly, taking tiny bunny-hopping steps as he was forced down the hallway. He mentally counted down the apartment numbers: 1501, the Caseys; 1502, the McConnells. 1503 was Mrs. Grahn. She was off on some cruise in the Bahamas; wouldn’t be back for another week. Neal stopped at her door, fumbling for his keys, trying to gain more time to think, to evade.

The ploy failed. The man behind him cuffed him hard on the side of his head, and Neal saw stars for a few painful seconds.

“Don’t try, boy. I know where you live. Apartment 1507, let’s go.”

“Who are you?” Neal demanded, teeth gritted. “What do you want?”

The man chuckled.

“Call me Liam. And my business is with Eames, not with you.”

“Apparently, it is with me,” Neal snapped. “Considering you have a gun in my back.”

“And don’t you forget that,” Liam agreed easily. He ground the gun into Neal’s spine, proving his point—and allowing Neal to make out the distinct shape of a silencer attached to the barrel.

They reached the apartment. Neal stood there for a few seconds, trying helplessly to come up with a way to stall longer, but Liam knew what he was doing. He prodded the gun forward, waiting as Neal unlocked the door stiffly. His heart fell as they walked into the foyer and he caught sight of Arthur’s suit jacket draped over the back of a chair.

“Neal?” Arthur’s voice called from the direction of his bedroom.

Liam nudged him. Neal cleared his throat, projecting a waver into his voice, trying to somehow signal Arthur to _get out, get out now._

“It’s me.”

Liam snorted, pushing him forward into the sitting room, putting distance between them. Neal spun around the second he was away, but the pistol was still aimed at his heart. He froze. There was an endless period of silence that could have lasted only a few seconds—and then Arthur was ducking out of the hallway that led to the bedrooms, leading with his gun.

He stopped the instant he saw Neal.

“Be a good lad and put the piece away, yeah?” Liam drawled, flexing his grip on the gun pointedly. Something foreign and bizarre flitted across Arthur’s features as his eyes darted between Neal and Liam—and it took Neal a moment to realize that the expression was fear.

He knew Arthur could beat Liam. He knew that with absolute certainty. But Arthur’s gaze was fixed on the gun pointed at Neal’s chest, intent in a way Neal rarely saw him. Slowly, the CIA agent lowered his weapon. He placed it on the bureau near the hall entry, stepping away with his hands raised and a cold mask settling over his face.

“Liam. It’s been a while.”

Neal blinked. He hadn’t factored Arthur into his assessments. So Liam knew Eames _and_ Arthur—that made him almost certainly ex-SAS.

“Yes, nearly four years now,” Liam drawled. “And you’re still working at the agency, I hear.”

“And you’ve gone rogue,” Arthur said. His voice was icy. Liam simply laughed.

“You’re shagging a mercenary Forger, pet. You’re not allowed to play the high-and-mighty card with me.”

Neal frowned, catching the emphasis on ‘forger’. It was said like a title, not a job description. He shifted curiously and Liam’s hand moved with him, tracking his movement even as he continued looking at Arthur.

“Eames would never take the jobs you do,” Arthur snapped. “I heard about the Rosenberg case, what your team did to that girl—”

“I gather information,” Liam interrupted. “I play point, that’s all. What the client wants is the client’s business. If the rest of the team mucks up in the mark’s head, that’s not my problem.”

“You’re still responsible.”

Liam sneered. “Spare me the lecture.” He twitched the gun in Neal’s direction, nodding toward the kitchen table. “Boy, drag one of those chairs over. You’re going to help me secure dear Arthur here.”

Neal bristled. He didn’t understand all of what the two men were talking about, but he knew an order he didn’t like.

“I will _not_ —”

“Neal,” Arthur said softly, and the words stuck in Neal’s throat. He looked over, seeing the steady reassurance in Arthur’s gaze. “It’s okay. Do as he says.”

Neal bit his lip. He trusted Arthur; he always would.

He went to get the chair.

 

* * *

 

Liam directed Neal like some kind of twisted conductor, ordering him around with flicks of the gun. He kept him well within range for an easy shot, even as he had him use zipties to secure Arthur to the slats of the chair. Neal tried to leave them loose, to give Arthur a chance to slip free, but Liam made a pointed tsking noise and forced him to tighten them fully.

Liam sat with his back to a corner of the room, eyes on both Arthur and Neal. He set Arthur up half-facing the door, and ordered Neal onto the loveseat, gun never straying from the boy’s chest.

Neal didn’t protest. He didn’t protest because there was an H&K pistol strapped to the bottom of the endtable next to him. He knew how to get it; he knew how to use it. All he needed was a chance: a matter of seconds to get it free.

He was not given that chance.

“You know, I never pinned you as the settling down type,” Liam commented. He was watching Arthur, but his aim never strayed from Neal. Arthur managed to put scorn and disdain and a bitingly cool hatred into one single look.

“And I never took you to be a moron. Just what do you think you’re doing here, Liam?”

Liam narrowed his eyes. The bantering Brit was replaced, for a moment, by someone hard-edged and deadly. Neal had seen glimpses of that same kind of person before, lingering behind Eames’ eyes; behind Arthur’s.

“Did you really think what we do doesn’t have repercussions?” Liam said derisively. “That you can jump into someone’s mind and steal their secrets, disassemble corporate empires and affect worldwide politics without anyone taking notice? Despite what your CIA likes to pretend, the PASIV technology is becoming known. And the world is finding out what we do.”

“Is that what this is about?” Arthur said, voice low. “A mark figured you out? Liam, we can help you—”

“Oh, shut it,” the Brit said irritably. He glanced at his watch, then motioned to Neal. “Give me your mobile.”

Neal blinked, still reeling from all the new information. He pulled the cell phone from his pocket numbly, looking between the two men as he tried to make sense of what Liam had said. Going into people’s minds? Stealing secrets? He glanced at Arthur, but the agent’s face was a blank slate.

He tossed Liam the phone. There were only four numbers in it: Eames’ cell, Arthur’s cell, the apartment and the pizza delivery place down the street.

Liam scrolled through the numbers, picking one out. He switched the phone to speaker, holding it casually in one hand, the gun still unwavering in his other.

 _“Hey, Neal,”_ Eames’ voice said after a few rings, tinny and distorted. He sounded tired. _“I just got off the plane—”_

“Hello, Eames,” Liam purred.

There was dead silence on the other end. Then, very tightly, Eames spoke again.

 _“Where is Neal?”_

Liam raised an eyebrow at the boy. Neal cleared his throat, speaking up.

“I’m here.”

“Neal is here, Arthur is here, I’m here—everyone’s here but you, pet.”

 _“I swear to god, Liam,”_ Eames snarled, his voice harsher than Neal had ever heard it, _“If you hurt them—”_

“You’ll do what?”

 _“I will kill you.”_

The words were cool, matter-of-fact, and a little chill went down Neal’s spine when he heard the absolute conviction in Eames’ voice. He’d always known the thief was dangerous. He just never thought he would see that side of him so coldly on display.

“Bold words from a man who’s half an hour away,” Liam scoffed. “And don’t try to involve the authorities on your way back, Eames. I’ll know if you do.”

“Don’t you dare come here,” Arthur snapped, sudden and sharp and startling them all. “Eames, get the hell out of New Yo—”

It happened quickly. One second the gun was pointed at Neal, and the next it flicked over to Arthur. A shot rang out and Arthur arched up against his bindings, an inhuman sound ripped from his throat; blood seeping into the fabric of his waistcoat high on the right sight of his torso over his clavicle. Neal screamed and over the phone Eames shouted in helpless rage, but Liam’s voice was completely calm.

“Hurry home, Eames. We’re waiting.”

 

* * *

 

Eames made it to the apartment in exactly twenty-one minutes. He had no weapons in hand when he slammed open the front door; there was no swat team or policemen or CIA agents behind him. He had on jeans and a white t-shirt that almost matched the pallor of his face, and when he took in the room with a sweeping glance, his panicked gaze fixed on Arthur, slumped forward in the chair.

Arthur raised his head slowly, eyes dark and unfocused. He managed a strained smile, trying to convey reassurance through the pain.

“Idiot. I told you not to come.”

A dishtowel from the kitchen was stuffed beneath Arthur’s waistcoat; the tie he’d been wearing was looped over his neck and under his shoulder, tied in a knot and applying pressure to the wound. There was blood on the towel, on the glen plaid of Arthur’s waistcoat; staining his shirt beneath and soaking into his fine Italian tie.

There was also blood on Neal’s hands, beneath his fingernails and flaking off his palms, but Neal very resolutely did not think about that.

Neal was back on the couch, ordered there after Liam relented and let him treat Arthur. He’d been taught basic first aid, of course, so he knew what to do—but knowing, he found, was far different from doing. Learning how to treat a puncture wound didn’t cover the tangy smell of iron, the slick of blood or the feel of someone you care about shuddering in pain beneath your hands.

The gun switched lazily from Neal to Eames, Liam’s attention focused on the newly-arrived thief. Arthur was injured and tied up and Neal didn’t pose a threat—and Eames was the one Liam came for. Something hot and angry curled in Neal’s stomach as Liam smiled easily. The man had invaded his home. He’d hurt Arthur—hurt Neal’s family. The fear from before was almost completely expelled, replaced with rage and something Neal was distantly aware of as a burning desire for revenge.

Eames offered Arthur a tight, pained smile, for once lacking any of his usual quips and banter. He turned to Liam.

“What do you want?”

Liam affected a hurt look. “Is that any way to greet an old friend?”

“I didn’t like you when we worked together, and I sure as shit don’t like you now,” Eames snapped. “Tell me what you want so I can get Arthur to a surgeon.”

“Do you remember Anton Prazak?”

A flicker of recognition passed over Eames’ features. His brow furrowed.

“The crooked oil baron in Almaty? We did that job years ago.”

“And it’s taken him all those years to find out what we did. After we ruined his company, he spent all of his remaining money and all of his time searching for the people who destroyed his life.”

Eames was quiet for a few long moments. Neal could almost see his mind working, dashing from conclusion to conclusion, settling the information into neat compact sections. A shuttered look closed off the thief’s eyes.

“How much is he giving you, Liam?” he asked softly, at last. “What was the price to sell us out?”

Liam snorted.

“Money, my life, and not having my entrails carved out and shown to me.”

Eames sneered, his lip curling.

“Is that all?”

“It was a compelling offer,” Liam admitted. He tilted the gun, pointedly, reminding him just who held the upper hand. Eames saw the movement and his expression immediately closed off, gaze darting to Neal and Arthur. Remembering what he had to lose.

“Alright,” he said quietly, holding his arms out to the sides, “You have me. Let Arthur and Neal go.”

Liam raised an eyebrow. Neal’s stomach plummeted.

“Ah, that’s not how this works, Eames,” the man chided. “I know how you work. You wouldn’t break under torture, would you? Pain isn’t the way to get to you. At least,” he glanced toward Arthur, “Not your own.”

“No!” Eames took a jerky step forward, panic in his eyes. “You have me, _let them go_.”

“I have you, but you’re not enough,” Liam explained. “Prazak wants the team. You were the easiest to find, since you left Her Majesty’s service—but Olivia and Jacob are still working there. I know you keep in contact with them.”

“You want me to sell them out?” Eames growled. Liam smiled.

“Here’s the thing, Eames. You are going to die, and probably in great pain. Prazak will see to that. Whether or not the people you care about suffer as well is up to you.”

“You piece of—”

Liam’s grip tightened on the gun, and it moved from Eames to Arthur, cutting Eames off mid-tirade. Arthur stiffened, eyes dark and angry and defiant, and Neal scooted away, closer to the end of the couch. Eames bowed his head.

“Olivia was reassigned to a team in Brussels,” he said, his voice ragged. “Jacob’s still in England. Ipswich.”

Liam smirked.

“And here I thought you were loyal.”

Eames looked away. Neal wanted to scream, wanted to yell that Eames would never betray anyone—that the only reason he would ever turn was if the people he loved were in danger. If Neal or Arthur were in danger. The boy glared pure hatred as Liam levered to his feet, a broad smile on the Brit’s face as he shifted his aim back to Eames.

“As soon as we’re away, I’ll call an ambulance for your sweet Arthur. No need to be uncivilized.” He chuckled. “Well, at least until I get you to Prazak.”

Arthur snarled, struggling against the zipties as Liam swiftly crossed the sitting room. Eames turned around obediently at his motion, crossing his wrists behind his back. And as Liam lowered his gun slightly, reaching into his pocket for another tie, Neal moved.

He didn’t think. He just lunged, dropping to his knees on the floor and yanking the pistol from the holster strapped beneath the endtable. Time slowed into stop-motion speed. Arthur looked at him, eyes wide. Eames turned his head in confusion. Liam jerked around, trying to bring his gun to bear.

Neal fired.

Blood splattered across the de La Tour hanging on the wall, bright red flecks against the black of the canvas. Chunks of matter speckled its surface, smearing as they slid down in pink and white blobs.

Neal stared at the body on the floor. The pistol trembled in his grip. He watched, eyes wide, as crimson slowly seeped from the ruins of Liam’s head into the beige carpet.

Then he dropped the gun, crumpled to his knees, and threw up.

 

* * *

 

Neal came back to the world in stages.

The stench of blood and bile assaulted his nose. The dizziness faded slowly, leaving him shaky and covered in a cold sweat. His vision was narrowed to a swatch of navy-colored glen plaid fabric.

It was only then that he realized he was curled up on the floor, cradled against the uninjured side of Arthur’s chest; leaning back against the sofa as he trembled. Arthur’s arm was tucked around his shoulders, his voice murmuring a soft litany of soothing nonsense as Neal regained his senses.

“…okay now, Neal. It’s okay. You’re safe now. We’re safe now. It’s going to be okay…”

Neal shuddered, pressing his face into Arthur’s neck. A gentle hand carded through his hair: Eames, crouching next to them with a bottle of water and a first aid kit. He set the kit on the floor and uncapped the bottle, stroking his thumb across Neal’s temple as he tilted his head up, tipping some of the water past his lips. Neal managed a few gulps before he felt the strength enough to take the bottle himself, Eames making sure he had a good hold before he let go of it.

“Now for you,” the thief murmured, snapping open the kit. Arthur’s arm remained draped over Neal’s shoulders, holding him close, and he seemed disinclined to move. Eames fished out a pair of scissors and began cutting the bloody waistcoat and shirt away, taking care of the wound with an expertise lacking in Neal’s slipshod dressing. He tossed the pieces of the tattered fabric away, and Neal’s gaze followed them with a kind of numb detachment.

With one of the sections of waistcoat came the inner pocket; Neal blinked as a small red die tumbled onto the carpet. It landed edge-up, caught within the soft weave of fabric. Without thinking, he reached to pick it up.

 _“Don’t touch that.”_

Neal froze.

He raised his eyes slowly, hand still outstretched. Eames’ voice had a tone he’d never heard before: one of panic and fear, with a kind of edge that demanded absolute obedience. He was frozen in place just like Neal, unmoving with a roll of surgical tape partway pulled out. The situation might have been comical but for the utter seriousness emanating from the two men: Eames’ face was pale, and Arthur looked just as worried.

The moment was broken as Arthur reached out awkwardly with his good hand, grabbing the innocuous little die. He tucked it into the pocket of his slacks and returned his arm to its previous position, pulling Neal closer.

“We’ll explain later, okay?” he murmured as Eames resumed treating the wound. “Everything. We’ll tell you everything; just continue to trust us for now.”

Neal nodded slowly. He’d never stopped trusting them.

“You’re going to have to get out of here,” Arthur said quietly, watching Eames’ fingers deftly smooth the bandage over the wound. It was only a short-term dressing: something that would last until a doctor could be reached.

Eames shook his head, sharply. “I’m not leaving you here. You’re hurt.”

“And you’re wanted by the police, the FBI and Interpol,” Arthur pointed out with a twitch of his lips. “I can take care of this, but you can’t be here when my agents arrive.”

“I won’t leave you.”

Eames’ voice was hoarse, strained, and Arthur gently disentangled himself from Neal in order to reach up, cupping the thief’s cheek in his palm.

“Hey,” he said softly. “This isn’t your fault. Okay? This wasn’t your fault.”

Eames shook his head, teeth gritted. The guilt he felt was palpable, rolling off his hunched shoulders in waves; written in the lines around his eyes. It wasn’t a look Neal often saw on his guardian’s face.

“He hurt you,” Eames said harshly. “He hurt you and he would have hurt Neal, and I led him right to you.”

“And you were prepared to lose everything for us,” Arthur replied. His voice was quiet, intense, and the look he gave Eames was for him alone. All three of them knew what would have happened if Eames had actually been delivered to Prazak.

Eames lowered his eyes.

“I could never see you hurt. Either of you. I’d die before I lost you.”

“I know,” Arthur murmured. He reached up, sliding his hand around the back of Eames’ neck. “I know that. So let me take care of this, for both of you. You look after Neal—go to the Queens apartment. I’ll meet you there as soon as I can.”

Eames hesitated for a second more, but eventually he nodded, albeit reluctantly. He helped Arthur to his feet, pulling Neal with them. Neal latched onto Eames’ side, struggling to keep from looking over the couch. But his gaze was drawn, helplessly, to where Liam’s body lay.

It was covered with a sheet. Crimson was seeping through the fabric, but at least it was covered. Neal breathed out a shaky sigh and Eames’ arm wrapped around him, pulling him close.

“You’re ringing Cobb?”

Arthur nodded, shifting his bad arm. Eames had fashioned a makeshift sling for it out of the ruined tie and a roll of gauze, keeping it from jarring the wound in Arthur’s shoulder.

“He’ll help me take care of it. I’ll think of something to file it as CIA-related business. But you should get going now.”

“I could stay until they get here.”

Arthur smiled, leaning over to brush a kiss to Eames’ lips. “I’ll be fine. Neal’s the one who needs looking after right now.”

He turned to said boy, who was still having trouble keeping from swaying on his feet. Arthur combed his fingers through Neal’s hair, bending down to kiss his forehead gently.

“You were brave tonight,” he said softly. “You protected the people you care about, and that’s what matters. That is what’s important.”

Neal nodded, numbly, but he hung onto the words like a lifeline. Arthur’s hand lingered on the nape of his neck before dropping away, pulling out his phone as he turned to take care of things.

And if Neal let Eames’ hand cover his eyes as they walked past the body, blindly guided to the door, he consoled himself with the fact that at least Eames was still there to do so.

 

* * *

 

The ride to Queens was quiet.

Neal slumped in the passenger seat of the car, staring unseeing out the window as the lights of the city flickered past. They’d taken Arthur’s car: a black Volvo S40 that was both sleek and nondescript, the essence of everything Arthur looked for in a vehicle. It was fast enough to handle high-speed chases, casual enough to not attract attention, and it wasn’t a huge investment if he ever had the need to drive it into the Hudson. Their three emergency duffels were in the trunk, filled with clothes and identities and weaponry in case anything ever happened.

Eames pulled up to a red-brick apartment building just off the botanical gardens in Flushing, steering the car into the underground parking lot. Neal pried himself from the seat, taking his own bag as Eames took his and Arthur’s. Eames’ arm tucked around his shoulders as he led Neal up the stairs, to the top floor studio apartment.

Which, apparently, wasn’t empty.

Neal blinked as Eames opened the door to the sound of Tchaikovsky’s 1812 Overture playing from a high-end stereo system in the corner of a rather bare sitting room. There was a couch and a few cushioned chairs, but mostly shelves lined the walls, filled with what looked to be art and forging supplies. A row of frames were lined in one corner, and precious art was placed around the room in seemingly haphazard array: on the walls, on a bureau near the back, on the coffee table in the middle. It resembled a storage space more than a home.

Eames grimaced, leaving Neal by the door as he went over to the stereo system. He turned it off abruptly.

“Oi!” he called, seeming to be speaking to the apartment at large. “It isn’t Sunday!”

A rather short man brandishing a wooden spoon appeared from what seemed to be the kitchen. He was in his mid-twenties but already balding, with thick glasses perched on his nose. His eyes were bright, intelligent, and decidedly suspicious as he regarded Neal and Eames.

“Circumstances occurred that resulted in a need to change my schedule,” he said primly. “This is now my Thursday residence.”

Eames grunted noncommittally, dropping the bags on the floor near the sofa. He reached for Neal’s, taking it from the boy’s hand and piling it atop the others. Neal wasn’t unused to the idea of having different safehouses in the city—they’d spent a week at Arthur’s condo on Staten Island when their apartment had flooded from a broken pipe—but he didn’t know that they occasionally came with guests.

“Moz, this is Neal. Neal, this is—” Eames paused, “What are you going by currently?”

“Haversham,” the man said with a self-satisfied look. “Dante Haversham. It references—”

Eames waved a hand, cutting him off. “Whatever. Just call him Mozzie.”

“ ‘Mozzie’?” Neal echoed skeptically. His nose twitched as he caught a whiff of whatever was cooking in the kitchen: pepper and onion, coriander and cumin. Something Indian. His stomach roiled at the idea of food, even though he’d only had a quick sandwich for lunch.

Eames shook his head. “Don’t ask. In any event—since I don’t use the flat that often, Moz comes by once a week to look after it. That way I don’t have dust collecting on my things and he doesn’t have a trail of forged real estate papers. I trust him.”

Mozzie snorted, even as Neal relaxed fractionally at the reassurance. Eames grimaced and shot the other man a look.

“I trust that he knows I would hunt him down if he ever stole anything from me,” he corrected.

“Which I don’t understand, seeing as you don’t care about half of this stuff anyway,” Mozzie mourned, looking around the room. “You don’t give them the attention they deserve.”

Eames shrugged. “It’s the sentimental value. I like keeping track of things I’ve nicked.”

“Reliving past glories already? You’re getting old.”

Eames cut him an unamused look. He turned to Neal, dismissing the other man from his attention entirely.

“Do you need anything to eat?” At Neal’s firm shake of his head, he nodded. “Alright. The bedroom’s right through that door; Mozzie’s is down the hall. Why don’t you go lay down for a bit while we talk?”

Neal nodded, quietly. He picked up his duffel and wandered to the indicated room, closing the door gently behind him. The bedroom was almost Spartan in its furnishings: there was a dresser and a bed, but nothing else.

The décor was a completely different story.

A stunning replica of Michelangelo’s ‘Creation of Adam’ from the Sistine Chapel was painted directly onto the east wall, taking up its entirety. The north wall was hung with artwork: a large Titian took up a space by the curtained window, and below it were copies of three of Ghiberti’s panels from the Gates of Paradise. Neal stopped in the middle of the room, turning a full circle as he gazed around in awe.

When his brain was finally done processing all of the exquisite pieces, Neal managed to drag himself through the half-open door that led to a small bathroom. He poked through his bag, pushing aside three different passports and an unloaded revolver, which he shuddered to even touch. He grabbed a pair of sweatpants and a t-shirt, pulled them on, brushed the bitter taste of bile out of his mouth and went to collapse in the bed.

He wanted to sleep. He wanted to forget, to pretend that the night had never happened, but it was a futile hope at best. Instead he curled up on his side, staring blankly at the Michelangelo on the wall.

Neal didn’t know how much time passed before Eames entered the room. The thief was quiet, as usual, barely making a sound as he toed off his shoes. He slid onto the bed and Neal turned to him immediately, pressing his face into the curve of Eames’ neck and shoulder; fist clenching tight in his shirt.

Eames’ fingers stroked through his hair and Neal’s shoulders trembled, his breath coming harsh and fast, but he refused to cry.

He didn’t regret what he had done.

 

* * *

 

Neal wasn’t aware he’d drifted off until he was waking up again, quiet voices speaking over his head.

“…Cobb suspect anything?”

“Of course. But he let it go.”

Some of the tightness in Neal’s chest loosened at the sound of Arthur’s voice. Still half-asleep, he rolled over with an incoherent mumble, out from under Eames’ arm to tuck himself against Arthur’s chest. The worry he’d felt at leaving Arthur—who was admittedly very capable—finally eased at the feel of him there, whole and breathing and _alive_. There was the scratchy material of a sling pressed against his cheek but Neal didn’t care, burrowing closer as Arthur chuckled.

“Surprising,” Eames said, his voice dry.

“You give him too little credit.”

“He wants to put me in prison. I don’t _like_ prison.”

“Most reasonable people want to put you in prison.”

“Are you calling yourself unreasonable?”

“I’ve always been unreasonable when it comes to you.”

Neal rolled his eyes. As much as he loved the two men, he didn’t feel any desire to listen to them make sappy comments at each other. He raised his head, a little blearily, squinting at Arthur’s fond expression.

“ ’s there food?”

Arthur laughed, the sound warm and pleasant. He was lying on his side, his right arm tucked into a sling, and wearing a simple button-up dress shirt.

“Yes, Neal, there is food. And then there will be answers.”

Neal nodded, slowly, glad Arthur was addressing the unvoiced knot in his stomach.

“Okay.”

They wandered out to the kitchen, with Eames very pointedly Not Fussing over Arthur’s injury. Neal was a little surprised to see the beginnings of dawn peeking through the window curtains: he hadn’t thought he’d slept that long. He was not surprised, however, to see his favorite cereal waiting on the table.

Eames and Arthur always took care of him. Neal knew that. And that was what made him able to eat his breakfast without giving over to the flood of questions begging to be answered.

They were sitting in relative peace when the bedroom down the hall opened, and Mozzie appeared, carrying a small duffel bag. He caught sight of them and wandered over. His eyes narrowed as he saw Arthur.

“Suit,” he greeted disdainfully.

Arthur chuckled.

“Nice to see you, too, Moz.”

Mozzie sniffed, dismissing the CIA agent from his attention as he turned to Eames.

“As it is no longer Thursday, I will be taking my leave. And you will no doubt find that I have not stolen or replaced any precious items here.”

“I never said you did, Moz,” Eames replied in amusement. The man shrugged.

“I like to cover my bases. It was a pleasure to meet the doted-upon ward of my landlord,” Mozzie tipped an invisible hat in Neal’s direction, “And given your parental figures, I’m sure I will see you again—on one side of the law or another.”

Arthur snorted into his cup of coffee. Mozzie waggled his fingers and disappeared from the kitchen, the sound of the front door closing signaling his departure. Neal looked at Eames with a bemused expression.

“Where did you meet him?”

“Chicago,” Eames said. “I had to quietly get rid of a Warhol I’d nicked from the Art Institute; Mozzie was my fence. When he moved out here to civilization, we got in touch again.”

Neal nodded. They finished eating in a comfortable, peaceful quiet, though the questions and anxiety started to bubble up in Neal’s chest again. He was picking at the remnants of his toast when Arthur finally pushed his plate away, folding his hands on the table.

“So. What are your questions?”

Neal looked at him, then back down at the table. He could recall the previous night in perfect, absolute clarity, down to the details of the blood on the wall and the mangled shape of Liam’s head. All of the other things he wanted to know—the stealing of secrets, the jumping into peoples’ minds—were secondary to the fact that last night, he had killed someone.

He raised his eyes.

“Who was he?”

Arthur glanced at Eames, clearly ceding the question. The Brit leaned back in his chair.

“He was part of my team, once. Liam, Olivia, Jacob and I. We worked together back home, and then we were sent over here as part of a joint CIA-SAS operation.” Eames chuckled, a little darkly. “I never did like the bugger. Too cocky, too arrogant; only ever cared for himself. I think I always knew he would flip on us, deep down.”

Neal studied his hands, laced together on the table in front of him.

“Why did he want to take you away?”

“Because of the work we did,” Eames said, his voice gentle. He seemed to know Neal was still rattled over almost losing him. “Because a former mark—Anton Prazak—discovered how we ruined his company.”

“How did you do it?”

Eames exchanged a quick look with Arthur.

“By using dreamsharing technology.”

Neal blinked. He looked between the two, brow furrowed.

“What?”

“It was first developed for use by the military,” Arthur explained. “The technology—the PASIV device, and the Somnacin drug it uses—allows people to share a dream. And, if they’re taught lucid dreaming, they can change things within that dream.”

Neal frowned. “Why? I mean, what’s the purpose? It’s just a dream, right?”

Eames shook his head.

“Dreams are the doorway to the subconscious. When we’re awake, we guard our secrets. But when you’re asleep, that barrier is gone.”

“Dreamsharing was originally used for training purposes,” Arthur said. “That’s where I was first introduced to it. Because your brain works faster when you’re asleep, you have more time in dreams compared to reality. The CIA wanted to use it to cut down on training time for soldiers, as well as give us an outlet for other things. See, if you die in a dream, you just wake up. There are no repercussions.”

Neal stared at him.

“That sounds awful.”

Arthur chuckled. “It can be. But once the technology was established, the CIA saw other uses for it: namely, the ability to find out information from someone who would otherwise refuse to cooperate.”

Neal’s mind raced as he took in all of the new information. The application for the idea was astounding—it was frightening. The possibilities for use and misuse—someone going inside his head, going through his secrets, looking into his thoughts—made a chill run down his spine. Neal stole things, but he couldn’t imagine stealing from someone’s mind.

He looked up.

“Show me.”

 

* * *

 

The coffee shop was like any of the hundreds that permeated New York.

An eclectic collection of furniture was scattered around the dimly-lit room, comfy cushioned chairs ringing low tables. Indie rock played over the speakers, matching the customers perfectly: mostly college students wearing European scarves and t-shirts printed with obscure quotes. The occasional businessman wandered in to wrangle a cup of black coffee and a newspaper, winding between the tables of laptops and hipsters.

Neal barely touched the chai sitting in front of him, marveling out the window at the pedestrians wandering down the sidewalk.

“I still can’t believe none of this is real.”

Eames chuckled, taking a sip of his tea. Neal had to admit that, for a dream, the sensations were incredibly real. His chai tasted amazing, the room felt cool, the table beneath his fingers was solid and worn.

“And these projections—they’re yours?”

Eames nodded. “I’m the subject of the dream; Arthur is the dreamer. He builds the world and my mind populates it.”

“And I..?”

“You are just sitting there, for now,” Arthur smiled. “We didn’t want to give you any control over the dream, not yet.”

“Is it dangerous?” Neal asked, finally tearing his gaze away from the passersby. They looked so _real_.

Eames and Arthur exchanged a glance. There was hesitance there, and uncertainty, but they’d never lied to Neal before. They didn’t now.

“Pain in the dream world still feels like pain,” Arthur explained. “And when you die, you still feel it. The projections are calm at the moment because we’re not doing anything. But if you change something in the dream—a window to a door, a dead end to a street—they’ll start to take notice.”

“And projections can get rather nasty,” Eames added, shooting Arthur a wry look that spoke of experience. “Especially with minds that have had training.”

“Training?”

“You can train your subconscious to defend against intruders. Arthur and I have both had it; most people involved in extraction have. Someday, eventually—when you’re ready—we’ll train you.”

Neal considered it. The idea of someone able to go into his mind and ferret out his secrets was not a comforting thought. He nodded.

“I would appreciate that.”

He climbed to his feet, unable to restrain himself any longer. Eames and Arthur followed him indulgently as he pushed open the door of the café, heading down the street outside. The city wasn’t New York, but it had similar buildings and layout. The people all had a tendency toward more European wear, which he assumed was Eames’ influence.

“So you said you’re a forger, right?” Neal asked, turning slightly to address Eames as they walked. “Arthur collects information on the target, and you imitate people within the dream?”

“Oh, I do more than _imitate_ , darling.”

Neal stopped dead in his tracks, spinning around at the sultry feminine voice. His jaw dropped as he stared at the spitting image of a demure Marilyn Monroe, wearing the infamous white dress and everything. Arthur was regarding the woman with something torn between amusement and critical appreciation, as though he were looking for potential flaws. She pouted at him.

“I’ll have you know I’ve spent a lot of time on this image,” she sniffed.

“Holy crap,” Neal said faintly.

Marilyn-Eames grinned.

“Does he have any repressed gender issues I should know about?” Neal asked Arthur warily.

Marilyn-Eames made a face at him. The next instant, her form shimmered, like a heat mirage. She gained height and broader shoulders and switched genders, and then Neal was staring at himself.

“ ‘Does he have any repressed gender issues I should know about?’ ” Eames mimicked snidely. His voice was annoyingly accurate.

“My teeth don’t look like that,” Neal groused. He caught sight of Eames’ reflection in the window behind him and pointed: it displayed the forger’s true form. “And you’re showing.”

Eames glanced back. “Yeah, that happens. I usually control the reflections as well, but I didn’t bother for this dream. There’s no one trying to kill me, here.”

He flickered again, reverting back to himself. Neal glanced around. The projections were walking around them as though they weren’t there, for all intents and purposes ignoring their existence.

“I thought you said projections get riled up when you change things.”

Eames chuckled. “Changing yourself is different from changing the environment. Besides, these are my projections—they’re used to me mucking about in here.”

Neal opened his mouth to ask another question, but was interrupted by the sudden sound of drums, followed by some warbling electric piano. He blinked.

Arthur turned to Eames with a horrified expression as the world began to fade away around them.

“What did you do to Edith Piaf?”

 **  
_‘My daddy was a bank robber, but he never hurt nobody…’_   
**

“I thought it would liven things up!” Eames protested half-heartedly, a grin on his lips. Arthur glowered.

“Do _not_ screw with my Piaf, Eames. I will _hurt_ you.”

 **  
_‘He just loved to live that way—and he loved to steal your money.’_   
**

Neal awoke laughing.

 

* * *

 

The new apartment elicited a jumble of conflicting emotions in Neal.

On the one hand, it wasn’t home. There was no Roger, no yappy chihuahua on the fifth floor, no pizza delivery guy who knew Neal by name. There was no blue stain on the sitting room carpet from an accidental paint spill; no nick in the wall of the foyer where they had dropped the futon when replacing it with Neal’s bed. None of the memories—from late-night dinners talking about CIA profiling to plotting a route to the Matisse at the Met that Neal _really_ wanted to steal—had moved with the furniture. They were still at the building on 59th: the place Neal had spent almost two years calling home.

On the other hand, the new apartment was almost directly across from the Met.

It was an old pre-war hotel, converted by the floor and half-floor into residences. The entire complex was ridiculously opulent, sporting a private fitness center and wine cellar storage and even an indoor swimming pool. They’d taken a half-floor apartment that had three bedrooms, so Arthur got to have a study again, and the balcony opened up to a marvelous view of Central Park.

The new apartment also contained no memories of blood-spattered de la Tour paintings, which Neal was pathetically grateful for.

They had stayed in Queens for a few days after that night. Arthur was in and out, attending to the necessary CIA paperwork and inquiry, while Eames stayed with Neal. The forger pulled out a chunk of clay and a stack of pictures of the Winged Victory, and set Neal to work making a miniature replica. The task was painstaking, but it was also comfortingly mindless—and it kept his hands busy.

It gave him the time to digest.

“How are you doing?” Arthur asked, leaning against the doorframe of the new study-storage-art room. Neal was sitting at one of the work benches, a scraper in one hand and a ribbon tool in the other as he worked on the fine detailing of Nike’s wing. He set down the instruments, blowing a stray bit of hair out of his face as he turned around.

“The cloth is giving me some trouble,” he admitted, wiping his hands on a damp towel nearby. “I’m going to need a finer sculpting tool.”

“I meant you, personally,” Arthur said with a smile.

Neal ducked his head. He stared at his fingers, picking at the remaining bits of clay.

“I’m trying not to think about it,” he said honestly, his voice soft. “Sometimes I wish I could forget the last few days.” He raised his eyes. “I mean, I’m glad I know what you do at work, now. And the PASIV technology really is amazing. Someday I’d like for you to teach me how to keep other people out of my head, but the whole business, the world of dreamsharing… I don’t think I could ever deal in that. Not with the lengths people go to because of it—not with the things that you can do with it.”

“We never said you should, Neal,” Arthur replied gently. “There’s no reason you should follow in our footsteps. Dreamsharing can be even more dangerous than reality—that’s why we hadn’t told you about it yet. We didn’t want you getting involved in our world.”

Neal nodded, no small amount of relief blossoming in his chest. Two years ago, he’d had no aspirations above getting by from day to day. But that was before Arthur and Eames; before he’d gained two people he never, ever wanted to let down. Something unknotted inside of him at the sight of Arthur’s fond smile.

“Come on, Eames just got back with dinner. And we have something for you.”

Neal followed him out to the kitchen curiously. Eames was pulling out plates and silverware, take-out Indian boxes scattered on the table. The forger looked up, and there was something like nervousness in his eyes when he caught sight of them. Neal looked between Eames and Arthur with a frown, seeing that same tension in Arthur’s shoulders. He stopped short in the doorway, folding his arms across his chest.

“Oh, I know those looks. I’m not sitting down until you tell me what’s going on.”

Eames let out an amused snort, setting the plates down on the table.

“Nothing gets by you, does it?”

Neal narrowed his eyes, not budging. Eames exchanged a glance with Arthur. He shrugged.

“Right, before food it is.”

Eames disappeared back into the master bedroom for a few minutes, returning with a sheaf of papers in his hands. He held them close to his chest, careful and almost protective, that uneasy look still in his eyes as he crossed the room to stand next to Arthur.

“Now, before you say anything, these don’t have to go through,” he said. “Not if you don’t want them to.”

“We were going to wait until your birthday,” Arthur added, “But because of the past few days, we just…wanted to reaffirm this.”

“You’re starting to worry me,” Neal murmured as he took the papers from Eames’ outstretched hand. He glanced down at them. And blinked.

They were adoption papers.

“These are adoption papers,” he said blankly. Out of instinct he looked over the quality of the paper, the ink and the signatures. On the front page, at the bottom, was a pair of familiar names that Neal rarely ever saw used.

“These are very good,” he choked, mouth dry. Eames quirked a smile at him.

“They’re not forged. They’re real. Official.”

“We wouldn’t do anything less for you,” Arthur added quietly.

Neal finally looked up, his hands trembling. When he met their gazes he finally comprehended the tension from before: they had been waiting on him; waiting to see his reaction. Waiting to see if he would say yes.

He’d lived with the men for almost two years, learned countless things from them and been astounded by their collective brilliance, but Neal could swear they were still hopelessly dense sometimes.

He crossed the room in a few quick strides, throwing his arms around the both of them.

“You,” he rasped, “Are the only family that’s ever mattered to me.”

Neal pressed his face into Eames’ shoulder; tightened his grip on Arthur’s side. Something deep inside him shattered, cracking and crumbling and falling away like dust. He leaned into the arms that held him, wetness in his eyes and a feeling of lightness in his chest that he hadn’t known in years.

He was the son of a CIA agent and a thief; he was a grifter and a forger and a con artist. He was a trickster and a sometimes-liar, and he was someone who knew the power of dreams.

He was home.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> **Art referenced:**   
> [Andrea del Verrocchio: David](http://pics.livejournal.com/cradle_song/pic/000b222a)   
> [Leonardo da Vinci: The Last Supper](http://pics.livejournal.com/cradle_song/pic/000b4fc3)   
> [Georges de La Tour: Magdalen with the Smoking Flame](http://pics.livejournal.com/cradle_song/pic/000b00xz)   
> [Michelangelo: Creation of Adam (Sistine Chapel)](http://pics.livejournal.com/cradle_song/pic/000b6dky)   
> [Titian: The Allegory of Age Governed by Prudence](http://pics.livejournal.com/cradle_song/pic/000b5kh1)   
> [Lorenzo Ghiberti: Gates of Paradise](http://pics.livejournal.com/cradle_song/pic/000b7f66)   
> [Andy Warhol: Mao](http://pics.livejournal.com/cradle_song/pic/000b15z6)   
> [Henri Matisse: Seated Odalisque](http://pics.livejournal.com/cradle_song/pic/000b33xk)   
> [Winged Victory of Samothrace](http://pics.livejournal.com/cradle_song/pic/000az3kr)
> 
> **Music referenced:**   
> [Pyotr Tchaikovsky: 1812 Overture](http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=u2W1Wi2U9sQ)   
> [The Clash: Bank Robber](http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dSl0w5Cqj-Y)   
> 
> 
> Also posted at [Livejournal](http://windswept-fic.livejournal.com/39415.html).


	3. For Good

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Arthur and Eames adopt a kid and raise that kid into Neal Caffrey.

It had been over a year since the last major crisis in their lives, so Neal couldn’t really be surprised when things went to hell again.

He was, however, surprised about the fighting.

Sixteen was a good age. It afforded Neal a non-forged drivers license, greater access to New York venues, and it was one step closer to eighteen—which was a step closer to twenty-one. He had a credit card and he lived in a city with endless opportunities for entertainment. He was dating Danielle Fehn, who was the daughter of an NYPD officer and loved Rococo architecture and iced cappuccinos, and he only had two more years of wretched school before he was free.

Yet none of that had any meaning when Neal walked into the apartment to the sound of shouting, and instantly felt like he was thirteen and lost again.

Eames and Arthur never yelled. They bickered and they bantered and sometimes they would go days without speaking to each other, but they never raised their voices. Neal dropped his backpack on the floor in the sitting room, creeping toward the master bedroom with his stomach tying itself into knots.

Both men were in their room. Eames was standing with his back to the door, his shoulders tense and his hands clenched into fists at his sides. Arthur’s emergency travel bag was already on the bed, an additional suitcase open as he shoved clothes and files into it.

“—clean up his mess!” Eames was snapping, his voice tight and angry. Neal stayed just out of sight, back pressed against the wall as he listened in, gnawing on his bottom lip.

“It wasn’t his fault,” Arthur insisted. “They’re letting him take the fall for this, Eames. They’re abandoning him just because they don’t want the PASIV to become common knowledge.”

“And it _isn’t your problem_.”

“It is my problem! I _won’t_ let them do this.”

Eames scoffed.

“And what do you think you’re going to do?” he sneered. There was mockery there, and no small amount of ire, but Neal recognized the worried and panicked undertone that lay beneath. “Take down the CIA? Expose their deceits and lies?”

“I need to make sure he’s okay. He doesn’t deserve this. He’s—” Arthur looked away, pausing with a suit jacket half-folded in his hands. “With Mal gone, he’s pretty badly off. I just want to make sure he’s alright.”

“No,” Eames said sharply. “No, that’s not how you work, Arthur. You’re going to try to fix him, and that’s not something you can do in a month.”

“I’m not,” Arthur insisted. “I won’t. I promise, I’ll be back soon. Just—give me some time to get his head back in order. To find out what went wrong.”

“He’s not your responsibility, Arthur.”

Arthur spun around angrily, dropping the jacket into his suitcase. His body was tense, taut.

“I won’t leave him!”

Eames looked at him.

“So you’ll leave your family instead?”

Arthur flinched as if burned. He bowed his head.

“Don’t,” he whispered, voice raw. “Please, don’t. Dom and Mal were like a family to me, too. I owe it to him, Eames. I owe it to her.”

That was what finally broke through the tension crackling between them. Eames’ shoulders sagged. He crossed the room, cupping Arthur’s cheek in his hand, tilting his head up.

“The next time we talk, it will be in person,” he said.

“One month,” Arthur replied softly. “I promise.”

They exchanged a long, lingering kiss that made something twist in Neal’s stomach, because it looked far too much like a goodbye. Arthur shut the suitcase, grabbing it and his duffel as he strode out of the bedroom. Neal didn’t even bother to hide the fact he’d been eavesdropping, staring at Arthur and feeling as thought he was about to lose something precious.

Arthur dropped the suitcase, reaching out to pull Neal into a hug.

“There are some things I need to take care of. A friend I need to take care of. I won’t be gone long, I swear.”

Neal nodded, hugging him back tightly. He stood by Eames as they watched Arthur head to the door, pausing to look back at them with a longing expression before slipping away.

“I’ll be back soon.”

He wasn’t.

 

* * *

 

A month passed, and Neal was unable to feel surprise when Arthur didn’t return.

 _“Cobb still won’t tell me what happened,”_ Arthur said, his voice tired. He called every week like clockwork, checking in on Neal and through him, on Eames. The forger still stubbornly refused to speak to him on the phone, holding fast to their promise. _“He wants to take a job in Gdansk. I’m hoping that getting back into the business, working again, doing something familiar—maybe it’ll help. Maybe he’ll finally talk to me.”_

“The investigation has concluded he killed her,” Neal said, mixing together a bit of paint on his palette. He was working on a replica of Seurat’s depiction of the Eiffel Tower, phone on speaker beside him. Their calls were almost always conducted via speakerphone, now, for a threefold purpose. Neal liked to keep busy while they talked, he missed the sound of Arthur’s voice filling up a room—and he was fairly certain Eames listened in sometimes for that same reason. So he left it on as he worked, paint smeared across the back of his hands.

 _“He didn’t,”_ Arthur replied tiredly. _“Even with the stonewalling he’s trying to do now, I know Cobb. I knew Mal. He would never have hurt her.”_

Neal had been following the Cobb investigation, keeping files on his computer and newspaper clippings in a folder on his desk. The evidence was damning—but it almost seemed too damning; too methodical. He agreed that there was something odd about the whole thing.

“So the job in Poland—is it dangerous?”

 _“Not terribly. We’re just building up the mental defenses for some CEO. His company is worried about dreamshare espionage.”_

Neal nodded absently, tilting his head to the side with a frown as he surveyed his work. The colors were off, near the bottom. He would have to start over.

 _“I miss you.”_

Neal paused with his brush extended toward the painting. He slowly lowered his hand.

“I miss you, too,” he said softly.

 _“How is—he?”_

There was only one ‘he’ in their vocabulary. Neal cleaned off his paintbrush, wiping the flecks of color from his hands with a rag. If Eames was listening in to them talking about him, it was his own fault. Neal sighed.

“He’s bored. Antsy. He started a copy of the Garden of Earthly Delights last week, and he’s already done with the middle panel. I think I might suggest a weekend trip up to Montreal, just to keep him from crawling out of his own skin. He misses you,” he quietly, after a pause. “He won’t say it, but he hasn’t been talking as much.”

 _“He always did withdraw when he was upset,”_ Arthur said, softly. The weariness in his voice was agonizingly palpable, and Neal wondered what the time difference was between Poland and New York. But it didn’t seem to matter to Arthur: wherever he was in the world, he always called Neal at the same time every Saturday evening. Their calls had a comfortable routine: Arthur would ask how Neal was, tell him what he was currently working on, and then ask after Eames.

“Give him my love?” Arthur requested, as usual. Neal smiled.

“Of course. _Bonne nuit, mon père._ ”

 _“Bonne nuit, mon fils.”_

Neal reached for his phone, tucking it back into his pocket. He began putting away the paints and brushes, not bothering to look over at the open doorway.

“You can come in.”

Eames didn’t even have the decency to look embarrassed at getting caught, walking into the room with his hands shoved in his pockets and the ghost of a smile on his lips. He glanced at the painting.

“You’re getting better.”

“Why won’t you talk to him?” Neal asked plainly. He slid the drawer of paints shut, frowning as Eames’ face closed off.

“The next time we talk, it will be in person.”

“Even though you don’t know when that will be?”

“That’s his fault, not mine,” Eames said sharply. “The promise is his to break.”

Neal just stared at him, helplessly. Calling his parents children never got him anywhere before, but he’d also never had such a strong desire to do so before. He scrubbed a hand over his face.

“Alright, fine. Whatever. I’m going to go to sleep.”

He went to leave, moving toward the doorway. Eames caught him gently as he passed, holding onto his arm. A flicker of pain cut through the bitterness on the forger’s face.

“I still love him,” he said softly, reassuringly. A parent telling his child that everything was going to be okay, even as the two sides spiraled away from each other.

Neal managed a sad, tired smile.

“I know.”

 

* * *

 

A truly awful year went by.

Neal learned a lot during that year. He learned Morse code and Caesar cipher, how to plant prints, the proper temperature to age a painting in the oven and that if you smile convincingly enough, people will believe you when you say ‘I’m fine.’ He learned that school records were ridiculously easy to fake and that girls didn’t really like it when you broke up with them.

Danielle took it fairly well, once Neal convinced her that the problem lay with him, not with her. It was close enough to the truth: he just didn’t care about her enough to go out on dates when he knew that Eames would be brooding back at the apartment. The longer Arthur was gone, the further Eames withdrew into himself. It was like watching a plant wilt from lack of sunlight, dying a slow demise of starvation.

 _“Cobb’s starting to push me away,”_ Arthur had said in their most recent conversation, his frustration evident. _“He’s shut me out more and more, and it’s getting harder for me to trust him.”_

And Neal wanted to shout, ‘Then come back home! We care about you more than he ever could!’

But he didn’t; he just said that he missed Arthur, which was true, and that things were okay—which wasn’t.

Eames refused to take any real jobs. He was called upon occasionally to teach subconscious defense to rich Wall Street brokers who thought they had secrets worth stealing, and once in a while he would be gone for a day, but never more than that. He stuck to the unspoken writ that someone would always be there for Neal—even as he slowly went stir-crazy, tension carved into the taut line of his shoulders.

Two weeks after his seventeenth birthday and one week before he was supposed to begin his senior year of high school, Neal slapped a pair of plane tickets on the table in front of Eames. The forger looked at them, blinked, and looked back up at him. Before he could say anything, Neal set a perfectly-replicated diploma down as well. Understanding dawned in Eames’ eyes.

“We’re leaving,” Neal said, very clearly.

Eames stared at the tickets, and something flickered behind the frighteningly empty mask that had settled over his gaze of late.

“Arthur wants you to finish school.”

“Arthur isn’t here.”

Neal said the words matter-of-factly, without any accusation or bitterness in his voice. He still loved his parents unconditionally, despite the messes they made of things, and he couldn’t resent Arthur for running blindly after Cobb any more than he could feel anger at Eames for becoming a husk of his former self. But Neal’s contact with Arthur was already limited to phone calls and text messages and emails, and he wasn’t about to lose his other father as well.

Eames squinted at the tickets. There was a glass of scotch by his hand and Neal was profoundly grateful it seemed to have been forgotten.

“England, huh?”

Neal grinned.

“Yeah. England.”

They went to England.

 

* * *

 

“You are not allowed to nick the Triregnum.”

Neal pouted. Eames rolled his eyes.

“You would never be able to fence it.”

“I wouldn’t sell it,” Neal replied, though he did agree that religious pieces were oddly difficult to get rid of. “I would wear it around the house. On Sundays.”

Eames cast him an amused look.

“We’d have to find you some robes.”

Neal beamed. He didn’t bother explaining that his grin wasn’t just because of Eames’ indulgence, but because it seemed his father had finally started to be himself again.

They were at the British Museum in London, browsing through a recent exhibition of assorted religious artifacts. Neal supposed he ought to feel ashamed for wanting to steal holy relics, but it wasn’t his fault they were so damn _shiny_. Especially the Catholic pieces from Rome. There had been a gold chalice studded with jewels that Neal spent a good ten minutes ogling before Eames came to drag him off.

Five months of proper English meals and a life of relative quiet in a cottage just outside of London, and Eames almost seemed back to his old self. He and Neal tossed snark back and forth like most fathers and sons threw baseballs, and the dull look in his eyes had mostly faded. There was still anger there, and bitterness, but it was tempered by the smiles he would get whenever Neal did something new and particularly extravagant. Stealing the Nocturne from the Tate had been one of those things—Neal had spent a full month casing the museum—but that was more self-serving than anything else. He’d _really_ wanted that Whistler.

There were still lapses, of course. Still moments when he would catch Eames looking out the window as if waiting for Arthur to appear at any moment. There’d been one particular instance when they’d been heading toward Piccadilly Circus, passing by Savile Row. Eames had stopped dead in his tracks, staring down the bustling street of fine tailors, and Neal had barely been able to pull him away with some rambling about Apple Corps and the Beatles’ last show.

They’d eventually ended up at Sotheby’s, where Neal may or may not have filched a first-edition Hemingway that was supposed to be up for auction.

Some of Eames’ old SAS contacts had gotten him back into the dreamsharing circuit, and the bored stagnancy appeared to be lifting. He still turned down the more dangerous jobs, but he seemed to feel better about leaving Neal for a day or two while he went off on a jaunt to Scotland or Wales. Eames had grown up in London—he trusted Neal to its myriad streets. Occasionally Neal accompanied him on jobs, but he never met the team Eames worked with and the trips were usually guided by self-interest. He now had two blank college diplomas tucked away in the cottage’s climate-controlled cellar, one from St. Andrews and one from Oxford, and all he needed to do was wait a few years before penning his own degrees.

Neal stopped suddenly as they passed through the Roman section of the museum, staring at a beautiful violet vase.

“That is sitting on the coffee table in our apartment in Queens,” he said, matter-of-factly.

Eames cleared his throat.

“It’s lovely piece, and I wanted it.” He lowered his voice to a mutter, “And it took me _four years_ to create a forgery that would fool the curators, so let’s move it along, shall we?”

Neal smirked, but he allowed himself to be steered away.

They caught a showing of ‘The Far Pavilions’ at the Shaftesbury before heading home, with Eames informing Neal yet again that he was never allowed to drive in England. Or Australia. Or India. Or really anywhere, but the man seemed to be preoccupied with Neal possibly getting himself into a car accident because of left-side versus right-side driving mentality. Neal planned to ignore his fussing at the next available opportunity.

They were at the cottage, Neal having just sent off a text message to Arthur-- _‘The BM had a showing of Auerbach, you would have loved it’_ \--when Eames turned to him with a thoughtful expression. The forger was standing at the stove, stirring a pot of chile con carne as Neal sat at the kitchen table.

“I’ve never thanked you.”

Neal blinked.

“For what?”

A wistful smile played around Eames’ mouth.

“For taking care of me. I haven’t been a terribly responsible parent, have I?”

Neal just blinked at him again, unable to come up with anything to say. He’d never wanted thanks—he’d just wanted Eames to get better. He understood the reason for Eames’ slow decline, just like he understood the little twist in his stomach every time he sent off an email or text to Arthur, knowing that the long-distance communication would never replace seeing the man himself. Neal stared down at his phone, tracing the groove in the side with his fingernail. It wasn’t often he was at a loss for words.

Eames left the kitchen briefly, and returned with a small mounted globe. He crouched by the table, setting it in front of Neal as he reached out to touch his cheek with a soft smile.

“Anywhere you want to go, Neal.”

Neal looked up, searching his father’s face. When he’d first bought the plane tickets to England, all he’d ever thought about was trying to erase the forlorn lines around Eames’ mouth. The globe—the offer of leaving again—was Eames’ sign that he was ready; that Neal had accomplished his task. There were still remnants of a mask of hurt lingering in Eames’ gaze, but the wry smiles and laughing eyes had finally returned.

Neal smiled, and spun the globe.

 

* * *

 

The day Neal and Eames started travelling was the day Arthur stopped telling him where he was.

 _“I know you, Neal,”_ he’d said. _“You can’t come looking for me. Don’t come looking for me. The jobs Cobb has been taking are getting more dangerous, and I don’t want you involved. Either of you.”_

Neal replied with a suitably scathing rejoinder, which marked one of the few times he and Arthur had ever fought. It didn’t help that Arthur was ridiculously good at hiding his tracks, and Neal traced seven red herrings before finally giving up. He suspected Eames would be able to locate the elusive point man, but Eames was still irritatingly stubborn when it came to all things Arthur, and refused to give Neal any information he might have had.

Neal sort of wanted to smack them both. Instead he channeled his ire into better outlets, like stealing a Tamayo painting from the Reina Sofia in Madrid.

Spain had been their first stop after England. They rented out a little villa in Toledo and spent two months mapping out the city’s myriad of twisting streets, taking the occasional trip out to Madrid or Pamplona or Barcelona. Neal studied the work of El Greco, tried to revive his memory of Spanish, and fell in love with tapas. He purchased a beautiful cup-hilt rapier that he shipped straight back to London—because any artisan who could make a replica that good deserved payment for their work.

Eames got word of a job in Venice, which suited Neal fine as he had quickly tired of pork in all its many myriad forms. They took up residence in a flat overlooking one of the canals, and while Eames delved into some art curator’s mind, Neal dove into the art and culture of Italy. He took the train to Rome and went straight to Vatican City, gaping at the Sistine Chapel, wandering through the museums and seriously pondering the merits of stealing the Papal staff. He took so many pictures of Caravaggio’s ‘Atonement’ that he was certain the security guards knew he was planning on forging it.

Venice became Bucharest, and on the plane to Romania Neal read Bram Stoker’s Dracula, in order to get into the mood. Unfortunately, he got a little too into it: when they visited the castle, on Neal’s insistence, he spent the entire tour clutching to Eames’ arm and very fiercely saying he was Not Scared.

Bucharest became Cairo became Oslo became Prague, and the more they travelled the more alive Neal felt. Sometimes they went because of a dreamsharing job Eames had been asked onto; sometimes they went because Neal spun the little globe and stopped his finger on a random spot. Sometimes they both agreed there was an art piece that deserved stealing, and plotted accordingly.

The longest they stayed in one place after Spain was a month and a half sojourn on Easter Island. They argued about the best way to steal one of the giant Moai—Eames preferred a heavy-duty excavator while Neal argued for softening the soil with water for easy natural removal—but eventually they agreed that shipping would be too much of a hassle to ever bother with. Neal did, however, insist on making a lovely papier-mâché replica and sitting it down on a random hill.

The reports in the papers the following day had Eames laughing for twenty minutes straight.

Their shortest stay was in Saint Petersburg. Neal adored the architecture and wanted to steal everything inside the Hermitage, but it was the display of Fabergé eggs that did him in. Neal wanted one. He _had_ to have one. So on only their fourth night in Russia they were already fleeing the country, emergency duffels in hand and the lovely Rosebud egg tucked into Neal’s side bag.

He might have taken Eames’ scolding a little better if the forger hadn’t been chuckling around his reprimands.

After what they later deemed The Russia Incident, Eames insisted that they lie low for a while. He had also been hearing whispers in the dreamsharing circles of a brilliant chemist working out of Kenya, so they headed there in order to ferret the man out. They lurked in Nairobi for a few weeks before being redirected to Mombasa, and it was there that they met Yusuf.

Neal liked Yusuf. The man was scarily intelligent, with an offbeat sense of humor and an easygoing outlook on life. He had a cat who immediately took a liking to Neal, curling up in his lap and purring loudly while Yusuf and Eames talked about compounds. The cat’s name was George Charles de Hevesy, after the famous chemist, and no few of Neal’s later aliases would pay homage to the friendly feline. He sent Arthur a picture of the cat’s face, happily mashed against his stomach, but received no immediate reply.

Neal didn’t know the time difference between Mombasa and wherever it was that Arthur was. He only knew that he was sleeping when he received the voicemail he had been waiting almost a year and a half to hear.

 _“Hey, Neal. It’s me. I’m sorry I couldn’t catch you earlier—the job went a little south, we found out we had the wrong mark… I’m just—I’m tired of this. I’m tired of Cobb. I’m tired of the lies and the secrets and all the dangerous stunts he keeps pulling. After we finish up this job—after we finish this job, I’m going to go to New York to finish clearing up some things. And then I’m going to come to you.”_

 

* * *

 

Neal had just two days of elated cheer before reality came crashing down again.

 _’Job went bad,’_ said Arthur’s brief text message. _‘New situation. Call when I can. I’m so sorry.’_

Neal barely had time to be devastated before he found out the reason for Arthur’s delay. Eames stormed into their rather stuffy Mombasa apartment, slamming the door shut behind him and cursing beneath his breath. Neal caught ‘git’ and ‘bloody moron’ as Eames paced the room like a caged tiger, yanking off the jacket of one of the linen suits he’d been favoring in the stifling Kenyan heat.

“Going to share with the class?” Neal asked, bemused. Eames stopped in his tracks, only then seeming to notice the teen sitting there. He scowled.

“Your idiot father—” and Neal had to bite down on his lip to keep from asking ‘which one?’— “Had a price put on his head by Cobol Engineering. Cobb as well, and some architect named Nash, though apparently he’s already been caught. Damn it, I _told_ him never to work with Cobol, what in hell was he thinking? What was _Cobb_ thinking?”

Neal tightened his grip on his phone, just barely resisting the urge to call Arthur _right then_ to make sure he was really okay.

“Will he be alright?”

Eames ran his fingers through his hair distractedly, shaking his head.

“I don’t know. He should be. Word is that Cobol is desperate to get them, which means they don’t know where they are, either. If he lays low for a while…”

Eames sat down abruptly on the sofa, pressing the heels of his palms against his eyes. He looked tired, and worried, and all kinds of afraid. But then the mask of indifference dropped back again, as he seemed to recall that he was still angry with Arthur for leaving them.

Neal sighed, and went to make some tea.

They spent the next few days hanging around various casinos in some of the shabbier parts of Mombasa. Eames brought back a few chips for Neal to forge—admittedly, third-world casinos were much less careful about the chips they cashed—and he seemed to rediscover scotch again. It was an undesirable habit that Neal noticed cropped up whenever the forger was trying to ignore something. While Eames played poker or blackjack or whatever other gambling outlet was the flavor of the day, Neal took the opportunity to watch the people around them. It was almost ridiculously easy to figure out the tells of the supposed experts. He kept a lookout in case someone accused Eames of cheating—which, at card games, he usually did—but he never played accomplice to look at other players’ hands.

They were at a shady casino near the harbor when Neal received a cryptic text from Arthur— _‘Tell him to not take the job’_ —which he dutifully passed along to a perplexed Eames. It wasn’t until later in the day, when Neal was absently watching the people around him, that he understood what the message might mean.

When Dominic Cobb came walking through the front doors, it took all of Neal’s willpower not to spit his soda back into its glass.

He caught Eames’ gaze and tapped the back of his left ring finger, glancing over the forger’s right shoulder pointedly.

 _Company._

Neal was too far away and the casino too loud to hear the words exchanged between the two men, but something blank and cool settled over Eames’ face when he caught sight of the extractor.

Cobb was not what Neal had expected. He knew his face from the papers, but those images had been taken years ago. Any anger Neal might have felt towards Cobb dissipated as he studied the man’s hunched shoulders; as he took in the lines around his mouth and the deadened look in his eyes. There was something empty and broken about the extractor, and all Neal could feel towards him was pity.

When they got up to leave, headed toward the upstairs bar, Eames made no motion to indicate that Neal should stay. So, of course, he followed.

He tucked himself into a corner, within listening range and in full view of their table.

“Inception,” Cobb began, and Neal felt his stomach drop to his shoes.

He knew the concept, of course, and he knew Eames’s team had tried it when he worked with the SAS. He knew that the job had been an absolute disaster, and he knew that inception was pretty much an impossible feat.

He also knew that his father was terribly bored of the usual corporate dreamshare espionage, and dying for a job that would challenge him.

It was not a recipe for anything good.

Sure enough, Eames’ eyes lit up instantly. Whatever resentment lingered from Cobb stealing away Arthur’s loyalty was put on a backburner in the face of professional intrigue; the interest of someone far too skilled to stay content with the norm.

“Interested?” Cobb was saying. “Because Arthur keeps telling me it can’t be done.”

Neal’s heart leapt to his throat. He’d already known Arthur was with Cobb, of course. He’d spent the majority of the past two years agonizing over that fact. But hearing Cobb talk about his absent father so casually—so obviously unaware of the fact Arthur’d had a family and a _life_ before—drove home just how long it had been since Neal had seen him. Cobb spoke of Arthur like a casual acquaintance, a business partner, when he was everything to Neal.

Eames froze with a pistachio halfway to his mouth. The flash of hurt and longing in his eyes was almost painful for Neal to witness, it was so raw and unguarded. The expression was quickly masked, however: replaced with a quirk of his lips that ran just this side of bitter.

“Arthur,” he repeated, as if tasting the name on his tongue. “Are you still working with that stick in the mud?”

“He’s good at what he does, right?”

A sad smile played around Eames’ mouth.

“Oh, he’s the best. But he has no imagination.”

“Not like you.”

A man appeared at the bar, too well-dressed and too wary-looking to be anything but a tail. For a moment Neal felt a spike of fear, worried that the Spaniards or the Czechs—or even worse, the _Russians_ —had found them, but the man was looking at Cobb, not at Eames. He glanced over, saw the recognition in his father’s eyes, and relaxed a little. They were talking about the job, about finding a chemist and using Yusuf, when Eames finally brought Cobb’s attention to his tail.

“That price on my head—was that dead or alive?”

A smirk curled Eames’ lips.

“Don’t remember. See if he starts shooting.”

Neal waited until both Cobb and his tail had gone—jumping out a window? _Really?_ —before he got up from his spot near the back of the room, wandering over to his father. Eames settled himself at the bar, finishing off his beer as Neal sat next to him.

“You’re going to take the job.”

It wasn’t a question. Eames smiled.

“Yes.”

 

* * *

 

 _“You are not going to Paris.”_

 _“Like **hell**.”_

The conversation had gone downhill from there.

 _“No,”_ Eames had replied sharply, cutting off Neal’s arguments. _“You listen to me. The people involved in this are powerful, and they are dangerous, and I am not letting you anywhere near it. I am going to Australia, and then **I** am going to Paris. **You** are going back to London. End of story.”_

 _“But Arthur—”_

 _“Arthur would say the same thing, and you know it. We would never put you in danger. I understand you want to see him again, but this job is not the time. Now come on, we both need to catch our flights.”_

Neal peered up at the dark sky from beneath the protection of the tin-roof awning, listening to the rain patter down. Through the automatic doors behind him, instructions and advisements were being given in both English and French, a tinny female voice calling out over the loudspeakers. He shifted the duffel on his shoulder as he watched cars drive by, absently palming the phone in his jacket pocket.

He’d waited long enough for Eames’ plane to get airborne. Then he had turned around, marched to customer service and changed his ticket destination from London to Paris.

Paris had the _Louvre_. Paris had the Musée d’Orsay and the Rodin and was just a short distance from Versailles. Paris was the fashion and cultural center of the world and above all else Paris had _Arthur_ , and there was no force on the planet that was going to keep Neal away.

“Neal!”

Neal froze in place, his heart hammering against his ribcage.

Slowly, he turned around.

Arthur looked tired. Granted, Neal calling him from de Gaulle airport at three in the morning probably didn’t help—but the weariness seemed even deeper than that. It was present in the tightness in his eyes, in the stiffness of his gait. He was wearing slacks and a t-shirt, trenchcoat thrown over his shoulders like an aside, and he didn’t have an umbrella. He’d answered his phone, sounding sleepy and alarmed that Neal would be calling him in the middle of the night, and it appeared he had just dashed straight to his car afterward.

In Arthur’s eyes was a disbelieving kind of wonder, and Neal felt something crack inside of him.

“ _Père—_ ”

He dropped his duffel to the sidewalk, leaving it lying forgotten on the concrete as he took the few steps to meet Arthur halfway. The shoulder beneath his cheek was damp with rain, but Neal couldn’t care less as strong arms enfolded him in a tight embrace.

“What are you doing here?” Arthur said breathlessly. “I know Eames took the job, but he would never risk—”

“I came on my own,” Neal said. He didn’t need any more tension between those two. “He tried to send me back to London. It didn’t work.”

Arthur chuckled. He pulled away, cupping Neal’s jaw in his hand. He tilted his head up with a fond expression, studying Neal’s face with a minute attention to detail. A wistful look crossed his features.

“You’ve gotten older.”

“By nearly two years,” Neal replied. Arthur swallowed hard, an agonized flicker of emotion flashing across his face.

“Neal, I’m sorry—”

“Don’t,” Neal interrupted, his voice hoarse. “Don’t. I understand. I always have. I just—I want you back. I just want my family back.”

“You know I would do anything for you,” Arthur said softly, brushing a stray lock of Neal’s tousled hair away from his face. “But I’m afraid it won’t be that easy.”

Neal sighed, leaning his forehead against Arthur’s shoulder. The chasm between his parents would take time to fill, he knew that. Arthur had left them with barely a word and Eames had responded by cutting him off completely. Neither one was faultless. And Eames—well, Neal had seen first-hand what happened to Eames. It wouldn’t be easy to mend something like that.

“I know.”

Arthur’s fingers curled around the nape of Neal’s neck, pulling him closer, arms wrapping tightly around him as if he expected him to disappear at any second.

“God, I’ve missed you,” Arthur rasped, his voice muffled in Neal’s hair. “So much.”

Neal pressed his face into Arthur’s neck, hands clutching at the damp material of his father’s jacket. The tremor in Arthur’s words was so bizarre, so raw and unguarded—a display of emotions only ever shown to those closest to him. To his family; to the people he loved. Neal squeezed his eyes shut, tightening his grip.

“Don’t send me away. I know I shouldn’t have come, but I couldn’t—”

“It’s okay, Neal,” Arthur murmured. “It’s okay. I won’t, I promise.”

Neal pulled back, studying his face intently. There was a fierceness to Arthur’s voice; a glint in his eyes that said this was a promise he wouldn’t be breaking. A slow smile curled Neal’s lips, mirrored on his father’s.

“Come on,” Arthur said. “We have a lot of catching up to do.”

* * *

Neal picked up his phone, tired and bleary, to a scathing string of half-coherent British in his ear.

 _“You little prat! I told you to go back to London—I **told you** to go home. Did you really think I wouldn’t notice you switching tickets? You’re a bloody **pain in my arse** and when I get to Paris—” _

Neal dropped his head back onto the pillow with a groan. Eames always did have the tendency toward slang when he was particularly displeased, and Neal was not nearly awake enough to translate.

It was close to noon, bright light filtering through the curtains. Arthur was staying at Regyn’s, a wonderfully sumptuous hotel in the heart of Montmartre. He’d booked a double, out of habit or otherwise, and had been using the extra room as a study until Neal dropped in. Papers were shoved off the bed and photos filed away in order to make room for Neal to wedge himself back into Arthur’s life.

Not that either of them had gone to sleep right away. There were two empty wine glasses still sitting on the lounge table, remnants of their hours-long conversation that had lasted until nearly dawn. They’d turned it in just as the sun was rising, and Neal had hoped to get in a solid eight hours of sleep to make up for his awful jet lag.

He really ought to have known better.

 _“—put your arse right back on a plane as soon as I land—”_

“No,” Neal said firmly, suddenly wide awake. There was a short, startled silence.

 _“Beg pardon?”_

“No,” he repeated. “I’m not leaving. You can try to make me, but it won’t work. I’m staying here.”

 _“Neal—”_

“ _No._ It has been nearly two years since I’ve seen Arthur—since I have had my family in one place. You can pretend to hate each other as much as you want, but I am _not_ giving up that easily.”

Eames was quiet for a few moments. Neal’s heart thumped in his chest, adrenalin kicking around in his system from the outburst.

 _”Where are you staying?”_ Eames asked at last. Neal blinked.

“Hôtel Regyn’s. Why?”

Eames sighed, and Neal could almost see him running his fingers through his hair.

 _“Book me a room. I should be done here by the end of the week; my flight is scheduled for Friday.”_

A wide, silly grin broke out across Neal’s face.

“And you’re going to get a rock from Uluru for me, right?”

Eames snorted. _“I’ll see what I can do.”_

Neal smiled, some of the tension in him easing. It wouldn’t be an easy task to repair what was broken between his parents, but at least he was going to be in a position to help try.

“Thank you,” he said, soft and sincere. He sensed Eames’ quiet smile.

 _“I’ll see you soon.”_

Neal lay in bed for a little while longer, soaking up the sunlight and the warmth of the sheets. He was in _Paris_ , wonderful lovely Paris, with the world as his oyster and the art scene laid out at his feet. He was pondering the merits of stealing something from the Catacombs—and weighing the ‘unique’ versus the ‘creepy’ factor—when a soft knock on the door roused him.

“C’me in,” he mumbled.

Arthur was wearing a sharp suit of pearl-grey wool, though the jacket had been left off in favor of just slacks and waistcoat. It was a Zegna, and not an outfit Neal recognized, so he guessed it had been made after Arthur left. He rolled sleepily onto his back, cracking a yawn and rubbing at his eyes as Arthur sat down on the edge of the bed.

“You left your favorite Kilgour in New York,” he said helpfully, reaching out to tug on the French-cuff sleeve of Arthur’s muted lavender shirt.

Arthur smiled, his expression fond.

“I left all of my favorite things in New York.”

Neal ducked his head, grinning back. He climbed out of bed, scrubbing at the mess of his hair as he padded to the bathroom, fishing out a toothbrush from his bag. He still felt disgusting from travelling, but that wouldn’t wear off for a few days at least.

“Do you think you’re up for some sightseeing today?” Arthur asked. “The Louvre has some wonderful showings on exhibit that I thought you might enjoy.”

Neal snorted, spitting out toothpaste into the sink.

“I will never be so tired that I would say no to the Louvre.”

The Louvre had Delacroix’s ‘Liberty Leading the People’. The Louvre had the Venus de Milo and The Coronation of Napoleon and it had the freaking _Mona Lisa_. A trip to Paris was not complete without stopping by to say hello to the Lisa.

Of course, to Neal, ‘hello’ was rather akin to ‘someday, you will be mine.’

He turned back to Arthur with a brilliant smile, unable to douse the feeling of lightness in his chest, which had been absent for far too long.

 _“Allons-y, mon père.”_

 

* * *

 

They went to the Louvre.

They went to the Louvre and the Musée Picasso and the Grévin; they went to the Arc de Triomphe and Sacré Coeur and the Champs-Élysées. They skipped the Eiffel Tower because the lines were too damn long to bother with, and because there was nothing truly worth stealing up there. They took a half-day trip out to Chartrés where Neal ate the best marzipan on the planet, and they went on full-day trips to both Marseille and Bordeaux.

They also went to Versailles, where Arthur ended up having to almost physically drag Neal away.

They drank smoky French roast and dined on foie gras and escargot and earthy black truffles smothered in butter. There were fresh baguettes and cheese and salami and croissants for breakfast every morning, and by the time the week was over Neal was fairly certain he’d gained pounds just from looking at all the food. It was like one of their old overseas trips, back when he was still in school and they would catch a week or two during breaks to show him the world. It was an intense, exhilarating period of time, stuffed to bursting with all the things to see and do.

There was only one thing—one person—missing, but both Neal and Arthur tried to avoid the subject as much as possible, even up to the moment he arrived.

“The Tamayo in Madrid,” Arthur said as they stood near the baggage claim at Charles de Gaulle airport, watching the arrivals and departures screen.

“That was me,” Neal confessed, a little sheepishly. Arthur’s lips twitched.

“The Topkapi dagger?”

“Eames.”

“Blackie?”

“Neither of us, actually,” he admitted. “Though, that was a lovely piece of work. We’re still not sure how the thief managed that one.”

“The Hollander chess set.”

Neal winced. That had not been a pretty heist. Too much melodramatic roof-scaling and window-picking, and he’d had splinters in his palms for _weeks_ afterward.

“Ah…that was me. In my defense,” he added quickly, “It was supposed to be your birthday present.”

Arthur blinked, just a twitch of surprise, before his eyes softened. He cast Neal a fond glance that seemed to forgive all of his thieving transgressions.

“How did you know about the Topkapi, anyway?” Neal asked, scanning the arrivals. _‘SYD 10:45 ON TIME’_ caught his attention. “We were positive that had been a clean job.”

Arthur raised his eyebrows.

“You forget what I do for a living.”

Neal chuckled. “Right.”

“I have a file,” Arthur admitted. Neal wasn’t even surprised. “All of the heists and forgeries in the past year that looked like they could be either of you.”

He paused, then added, “The Fabergé threw me. That one was _messy_.”

Neal made a face. The Rosebud was in his possession; that was all that mattered, for now. He was still working on adding bonus points for flair.

“The Hermitage is a very secure museum,” he said loftily. “With _very_ good night guards.”

“Ex-military?” Arthur asked, voice dry. Neal grimaced.

“Attached to Yarygins and AK-47s,” he agreed mournfully. Arthur shook his head.

“I wish I could yell at you for putting yourself into that kind of danger,” he said, bemused, “But it wouldn’t make any difference, would it?”

“Probably not,” Neal admitted. He grinned unrepentantly. “It was a _Fabergé_.”

“And it cost me my favorite pair of oxfords.”

Neal nearly jumped out of his skin at the familiar voice behind him. He did an abrupt about-face, turning on heel to scowl at his irritatingly sneaky father.

“Don’t _do_ that.”

Eames wore a smirk and a white pinstriped dress shirt, button undone at the throat. There was a duffel slung over his shoulder and Neal knew there would be no other luggage: they always travelled light. There were dark circles beneath Eames’ eyes, courtesy of thirty hours spent on planes and in airports, and the curve of his lips was decidedly fixed.

Neal held his breath as Eames’ gaze shifted from him to Arthur. But the expression on Eames’ face was so completely closed off, so vacant of emotion, that he couldn’t get any kind of reading—which, in and of itself, was a bad sign.

“Arthur.”

“Eames,” Arthur replied quietly. “It’s been a while.”

Neal cast him a helpless look, hearing the forced neutrality in his voice. Eames was keeping himself distant and Arthur’s automatic reaction was to clamp down on his own emotions, and both of them were damn _idiots_.

“Longer than a month,” Eames noted. Arthur’s face smoothed into a carefully blank mask.

“So it has.”

Neal kind of wanted to stab them both.

Arthur turned, tilting his head toward the airport exit.

“I have a car. Shall we go?”

Eames nodded briefly, hitching his bag up and moving to follow.

Neal trailed after them and wondered if patricide was still considered illegal in France.

 

* * *

 

Neal didn’t find himself particularly attracted to the dreamsharing world. In fact, it would probably be accurate to say he avoided it like the plague. Past experience and the whole concept made him leery of anything that involved a PASIV device.

These were, however, exigent circumstances.

Neal had booked Eames a double room down the hall from Arthur’s, because while he was hopeful, he wasn’t stupid. The probability of everything going immediately back to normal had about the same success ratio as Neal’s chances of stealing the Mona Lisa. They dropped Eames off at the room to nap—because, really, _thirty hours_ travelling—but not before Neal wrangled out a promise of meeting them for dinner later.

Dinner was, to put it mildly, awful.

They went to a quiet little restaurant in the heart of Montmartre, sitting at a sidewalk table surrounded by the remnants of Paris’ eclectic artistic community. Eames ordered the chicken basquiase, Arthur the tartiflette, and Neal just picked out an array of different appetizers in order to try a bit of everything. The food was delicious, the night was warm and the ambience was lovely—and the conversation was positively dreadful.

Eames and Arthur barely talked. They let Neal keep the dialogue running, his throat going nearly hoarse from trying to coax them into conversation. When they did actually acknowledge each other, it was only to talk about the job or exchange thinly-veiled barbs. The banter wasn’t like their old sparring at all: it was sharp and bitter on both ends, petty and spiteful and snide. When it came to paying for the meal they bickered over who would pay for Neal, their eyes narrowed and teeth bared in grimaces that barely passed for smiles.

Neal passed his own credit card to the waiter, glared at his parents’ surprised faces, and stalked back to the hotel alone.

It was at breakfast the following morning—which he had been invited to through the locked door of his room, Arthur conciliatory and apologetic on the other side—that Neal decided to break one of his own personal rules. He never looked into the work his parents did for a multitude of reasons; not the least of which being it was _dangerous_. But the threat of danger hadn’t kept him from the Tamayo in Madrid or the Rosebud in Saint Petersburg, and it certainly wasn’t about to stop him from keeping an eye on his frustratingly obstinate fathers.

After breakfast, which had been admittedly awkward, Neal pulled on some typical Parisian fashion and tailed Arthur to work. Eames took a cab because Eames despised public transport, but Arthur knew the inner workings of the city’s convoluted metro system. Neal followed him to an out-of-the-way, rundown old warehouse in Reuilly, the twelfth arrondissement located in eastern Paris. He took a while to scope out the building, taking in the unfinished construction work on the north side and the high windows. He wound his way up one of the fire escapes, making not a sound as he moved slowly and carefully along the wrought-iron steps. He stopped when he found a good vantage point, able to see and hear within.

A small group was assembled inside, forming a half-circle around tables and boards littered with information. Neal spotted Arthur, and Cobb; Yusuf toying with some sort of vial, and Eames talking to them, shifting on his feet as he outlined what he’d learned in Sydney. There was also a young woman present, and an older Japanese man dressed in a ridiculously expensive suit.

“…in the first level of the dream,” Eames was saying, “I can impersonate Browning and suggest concepts to Fischer’s conscious mind. Then, when we take him a level deeper, his own projection of Browning should— _should_ —feed that right back to him.”

“So he gives himself the idea?” Arthur asked, a grudging hint of respect on his face. Neal felt a tiny flair of hope in his chest, but it was quickly doused by the coolly professional tone of Eames’ voice.

“Precisely. It’s the only way it will stick; it has to seem self-generated.”

Arthur leaned back in his chair, a slow smile spreading across his lips, and the hope flickered back to life again.

“Eames…I am impressed.”

A brief shadow of surprise crossed Eames’ face. But it was erased, quickly, by a tight smile and something that might have been hurt in his eyes.

“Your condescension, as always, is much appreciated, Arthur. Thank you.”

Arthur’s face as Eames turned away was startled, but when he parted his lips to say something, no words came out. Neal let out a frustrated breath and resisted the urge to bang his head against the wall. Morons. _Morons_.

Arthur quietly excused himself, disappearing further back into the warehouse, and Neal cast Eames an annoyed look. The outright barbs were bad enough without the two of them looking for insults where there were none. A little of the annoyance faded, however, when he saw the tense set of Eames’ shoulders even after Arthur left. The forger threw on an easy smile as he turned to one of the tables, peering over what looked to be a model cityscape—and while the others seemed to accept the casual grin, Neal knew him far too well to believe it.

“You shouldn’t be here.”

Neal let out an embarrassingly high-pitched yelp, nearly jumping out of his skin. The sound attracted attention from inside the warehouse—Eames and Cobb both went for their guns—as he jerked around, scowling into Arthur’s less-than-amused expression.

“I thought you were going to Espace Dalí today,” Arthur said flatly.

Neal thought, for an instant, about trying to worm his way out of the situation.

It was a very brief impulse.

“I lied,” he admitted. Arthur’s lips twitched.

“Really,” he intoned, deadpan.

“Arthur?”

Arthur sighed at the sound of Cobb’s voice calling him from within the warehouse. He reached out to take a firm hold of Neal’s arm, pulling him away from the window.

“Come on. You might as well meet the team.”

 

* * *

 

Cobb was not happy.

Of course, Cobb had also stolen Neal’s father from him for almost two years, so he really cared fuck-all about how the man felt.

“Arthur?” Cobb inquired warily as Neal was dragged into the warehouse. Neal glanced at him only briefly before turning his attention to the others—Yusuf looked amused, and offered him a jaunty wave, while Eames appeared close to an apoplectic fit. The Japanese man raised an urbane eyebrow and the young woman blinked in confusion.

“This is Neal,” Arthur said, his voice dry. “He followed me from my hotel this morning.”

“A spy?” the Japanese man asked, brow furrowing. The glance he cast Neal was skeptic, but there was a tone to his voice that made Neal suddenly very certain he never wanted to piss the man off.

“Our son,” Eames ground out, folding his arms across his chest and cutting Neal a displeased—if not particularly surprised—look.

There was a brief, weighty silence. No few eyes stared between the forger and point man.

“It’s complicated,” Neal supplied helpfully.

Arthur smacked the side of his head lightly.

“You have a _son_?” Cobb said, his voice low and a little incredulous.

“Wait, you two are together?” said the young woman.

“I thought you were leaving him in Mombasa,” Yusuf murmured to Eames.

“It’s _complicated_ ,” Neal repeated gleefully.

“ _You_ ,” Arthur said sharply, pointing Neal to a chair. “You, sit. _Stay._ Don’t touch anything.”

Neal obediently slunk to the chair, situated between Yusuf and the Japanese man, and managed to pout only a little bit. Arthur and Cobb and Eames retreated just out of earshot, gestures and body language speaking to a rather tense argument. Neal looked around the remaining members of the group, his eyes alighting on the luxurious cut of the Japanese man’s suit, and the shiny platinum cufflinks peeking out from beneath his jacket sleeve. He stretched out a hand.

“I’m Neal,” he greeted.

The man’s lips twitched in amusement, and he obligingly reached over to shake Neal’s hand.

“Saito.”

“And I’m Ariadne,” the young woman offered, watching the exchange with bemused curiosity. She tilted her head. “Are you really their son?”

Neal managed an easy smirk, letting go of Saito’s hand and glancing over at the three arguing adults. He wasn’t sure if he should feel annoyed or fond. Arthur and Eames were both talking to Cobb, which meant they were united in one thing, at least.

“Adopted,” he explained. “When I was thirteen.”

“I didn’t even think they liked each other,” Ariadne murmured.

Neal offered her a wry look. She seemed nice enough, but he wasn’t about to divulge all of the sordid details of his family drama to a complete stranger.

“Like I said, it’s complicated.”

“Complicated enough to interfere with their work?” Saito asked. He was direct: to the point and bluntly straightforward. Neal liked him immediately.

He shook his head.

“No, they’re professionals. You don’t have to worry about this interfering with the job.”

Saito nodded, seemingly satisfied. They all glanced up expectantly as the other three returned, Cobb wearing a closed-off expression with something that looked satisfyingly like guilt in his eyes. He turned to one of the tables, leafing through a stack of files as Arthur fixed Neal with a severe look.

“We’d send you back to the hotel if it wouldn’t be a useless gesture. You’re allowed to stay as long as you’re quiet and don’t interfere.” He paused, then added, “And don’t steal anything.”

Ariadne raised her eyebrows.

“Steal anything?”

“He _is_ Eames’ child,” Yusuf murmured. Ariadne’s mouth made a little ‘O’ of understanding, and she nodded in agreement. Neal smirked.

The group broke up, then, attending to their various duties involving the job. The warehouse had been separated into sections with dividers and cordons: Yusuf retreated to a corner to work on his compounds, an area Neal resolutely avoided because he was already well aware of the chemist’s penchant for experimentation. It turned out Ariadne was the team architect, surrounding herself with models and blueprints and depictions of impossible structures that Neal recognized as Arthur’s influence. By the way Saito held himself and wandered around the warehouse like an overseer, Neal guessed he was the man with the money behind the job.

Cobb retreated to a walled-off back room and resolutely avoided looking at him, which was fine by Neal. He held no special place in his heart for Dominic Cobb.

“Your fathers are remarkably intelligent men,” Saito commented at one point, when Neal had tucked himself away in a corner of the warehouse in order to better observe everyone. Eames was hooked up to the PASIV, working on his forgeries within the dreamscape. The occasional looks Arthur shot his way—at Eames’ face soft in sleep, unguarded and defenseless—made something twist in Neal’s stomach. He glanced at Saito with a wry smile.

“You would think that, wouldn’t you?”

Saito chuckled, pulling up a chair next to Neal’s.

“Intelligence does not necessarily correlate with emotional maturity,” he agreed.

Neal watched as the timer on the PASIV ticked off, rousing Eames from sleep. The first thing his father did—the first thing he always did—was to look for Arthur. It was a natural instinct that was cut off as soon as Eames realized what he was doing, the blank mask settling back into place. As he wandered back toward the washroom, Arthur surreptitiously looked up from his desk, his eyes following Eames until the thief disappeared behind a door.

Neal sighed.

“Aristotle had a saying,” Saito murmured, following Neal’s gaze, “That I believe you may find useful. ‘A common danger unites even the bitterest of enemies.’ ”

Neal paused, cocking his head to the side as he considered it.

Then a slow, devilish grin spread across his face.

“Mr. Saito,” he smiled, “I believe you are correct.”

 

* * *

 

Neal returned to the warehouse occasionally during the following weeks, allowing whim to guide his travels. Sometimes he would go straight there in the mornings with Eames or Arthur, observing them with watchful eyes and flirting outrageously with Ariadne whenever he had a chance. Saito taught him origami and Yusuf let him combine things that bubbled and fizzed, and he and Cobb continued to pretend the other didn’t exist. Sometimes Neal avoided the warehouse altogether and went exploring around Paris: wandering through Père Lachaise, visiting Notre Dame; sampling the artistic flavors of Montparnasse. He went back to the Louvre frequently, sketchbook and graph paper his ready companions.

He switched residences daily between the two hotel rooms, staying with Arthur one night and Eames the next, because he’d come to the conclusion his parents were _children_ and he didn’t want them getting any ideas of favoritism.

Things came to a head when Yusuf was testing out his new sedative, using Arthur as his guinea pig. Neal had always known the chemist had a bit of a sadistic streak, and Yusuf took a bit too much glee out of tipping over Arthur’s chair repeatedly. But what really rankled Neal was Eames, standing nearby, watching and snickering with all the childish glee of a schoolchild pulling their crush’s pigtails.

Neal waited until Arthur had been knocked awake again, frowning and rubbing at his elbow on the floor, before stalking over. He stopped in front of the three men, who froze at his appearance. Eames at least had the decency to look guilty.

“Sometimes,” Neal said curtly, “I wonder if you’re even capable of acting like normal human beings.”

Both Eames and Arthur looked stricken, and even Yusuf appeared somewhat abashed. Neal turned on heel and strode out of the warehouse—and he was just able to conceal his smirk until he was outside.

He turned off his phone, took the metro to the Champs-Élysées, and spent the rest of the day wandering through the shops until night fell.

Then he went to steal the Mona Lisa.

He didn’t _succeed_ , of course. Only an idiot would try to lift the Lisa in her current state, with the Louvre’s anal-retentive security system and safeguards. If Neal really wanted to steal her, he would wait until an exhibition showing out of the country, or maybe during building reconstruction. And he still hadn’t come up with a good way to get past the bulletproof glass without damaging the painting as well.

But the attempt was more important than the heist itself—and it was the attempt that had Neal scrambling out the back loading bay door of the Louvre, security hot on his tail and the sound of sirens wailing in the distance.

He flipped open his phone, turned it back on—four unread texts, two missed calls and a voicemail—and sent off a hasty message.

 _‘S.O.S.’_

It was under a minute when his cell buzzed back, _’Arthur calling’_ reading on the display.

 _“Where are you?”_

Arthur’s voice was clipped, precise, but Neal heard the panic beneath the professionalism. He glanced at the street signs as he passed, the sound of boots thumping against the pavement behind him, well-dressed Parisians yelping and darting out of his way.

“Heading northeast on Rue d’Aboukir. Just passed Le Santier des Halles.”

 _“Hang a left when you get to Poissoniere,”_ Arthur ordered. _“Head up to—”_

There was the unmistakable sound of a door slamming open on the other end of the line. Neal grinned tightly when he heard Eames’ voice, frantic and panicked.

 _“Arthur! Neal—”_

 _“I have him. Neal, go toward Bonne Nouvelle. You should be able to blend in with the club and theater crowds.”_

Neal obligingly did as he was told, careening off the sidewalk to dart across the street, car brakes slamming and voices shouting behind him. A glance over his shoulder revealed the security guards from the Louvre still in pursuit. Dogged bastards.

 _“Where’s your—”_

 _“Keys, here. You’ll—?”_

 _“I’ll drive. Does he need backup?”_

“No guns!” Neal panted, ducking around a rather obese woman who squawked at him in protest.

 _”Just an escape route,”_ Arthur relayed.

Over the line, Neal could hear the sounds of car doors opening and closing, a quiet engine coming alive in the background.

 _“Bloody prat tried to nick the **bleeding Mona Lisa** ,”_ Eames growled. Neal suppressed the compulsion to roll his eyes; he shouldn’t be surprised anymore that Eames knew the instant something high-profile happened in the art world.

 _“Did he, now?”_

Arthur’s voice dripped with the promise of punishment later. Neal winced.

“Run now,” he wheezed. “Talk later.”

Neal took a sharp turn as he reached Boulevard Bonne Nouvelle, stripping off his dark sweater and tossing it into a nearby trash bin; touristy baseball cap following suit. Sure enough, the clubbing and theater crowds were out en masse. A long line of twenty-somethings were lined up outside of Club Rex, the bass beat of music able to be heard even through the walls. Neal slipped quietly into the crowd, relaxing the tense set of his shoulders and grinning along with the half-drunk throng as he struggled to even out his breathing.

He looked along with everyone else as the guards skidded to a stop when they reached the boulevard, looking around for their quarry. They had a brief exchange before splitting up, going in opposite directions down the street. Neal grinned.

The French police would soon be out to trace his steps and ask people questions, so Neal didn’t wait long before extricating himself from the line and strolling back toward the street. His grin widened as he caught sight of a familiar car pulling up to the sidewalk.

“Did they see your face?” Eames asked tautly as soon as Neal flopped into the back seat. He merged back into traffic with his knuckles rather white around the steering wheel, staring hard at Neal in the rearview mirror. Arthur just turned around to scowl at him from the passenger’s seat, the fear and panic in Eames’ gaze mirrored in Arthur’s own.

“No,” Neal replied, with conviction. He’d made sure of that, spending more than a week mapping out security cameras and guard patrols.

“Good,” Arthur said, sounding relieved. Then his eyes narrowed sharply. “Now would you care to explain what in _hell_ you thought you were doing? You turn your phone off all day, disappear into the city with no way to reach you, and then suddenly we find out that you’re being tailed by half of Paris’ police force? What were you _thinking_?”

Neal blinked at him. The adrenalin was just starting to fade from his system, leaving him giddy and just a little bit punch-drunk. He couldn’t help the laughter that bubbled in his chest as he stared at Arthur’s pale face; at Eames’ intent eyes in the rearview mirror.

“I led them on a merry chase,” he offered, a shit-eating grin curling his lips.

Arthur stared at him.

Then he turned to Eames.

“Our bright, intelligent son seems to have been swapped for a clone with fewer brain cells.”

“We could drop him into the Seine,” Eames offered.

Neal pouted.

It didn’t come off very well, however, as he just couldn’t stop grinning.

 

* * *

 

Neal unzipped his backpack to a small avalanche of paper cranes tumbling out of the front pocket, scattering on the floor at his feet.

The stewardess raised an eyebrow.

“I was bored,” he said wryly, stuffing them back in. She offered him an amused look and moved on, obviously content to humor the young man with clear connections to the mysterious group in first class.

There were one-hundred and twenty-three cranes stuffed into Neal’s backpack, at last count. And he _had_ counted: there had been nothing better to do, when Arthur and Eames declared he was no longer allowed to wander Paris on his own. Instead they dragged him along to the warehouse every morning after what was deemed ‘The Mona Lisa Fiasco’, dropping him in a corner to wither away of boredom. Saito graciously purchased him some origami paper and helped him brush up on his Japanese, but that hadn’t sated the stifled wanderlust that drove Neal to distraction.

He supposed he’d gotten what he wanted, uniting his parents in _something_ , but apparently he hadn’t really thought things completely through.

Maurice Fischer’s death had come as a bit of relief, in that respect. It meant almost twenty hours on Saito’s private jet flying to Sydney—because Arthur and Eames unanimously decided Neal was not leaving their sight—but at least it was something new. They were only in Australia for half a day before they were boarding another flight: this one to Los Angeles, during which everything would be decided. Neal had seen Cobb earlier; seen the worry and weariness written on his face, and despite himself he hoped things worked out for the man. It wasn’t a completely selfless thought, of course—if Cobb could go back to his kids, maybe then Arthur would be free to live his own life again. Maybe Neal could get his own father back.

Neal shot a rather pensive look at the closed curtain leading to first class.

Saito had been kind enough to buy out the seats next to Neal’s in business class, but that didn’t make a long boring plane ride any more interesting. He’d amused himself by flirting with the stewardesses—who tolerated him like anyone would tolerate a person who knew your boss—and cobbled together a new alias to fool around with. Nicholas Halden was a terribly dashing young man, born in Reno and rather fond of gambling away his money. Neal thought he would do nicely for the occasional high-roller scam.

 _”Ladies and gentlemen, we are due to land in Los Angeles in approximately twenty minutes. We ask that you please fasten your seatbelts at this time…”_

Neal shoved his backpack beneath the seat, peering out the window as they descended toward LAX. He couldn’t keep his gaze from wandering back towards first class, however, apprehension curling in his gut. Arthur and Eames—and Cobb, Neal had to grudgingly admit—were some of the best in their field. They were unrivaled in the dreamsharing world—but inception was believed to be impossible.

The plane landed and Neal stilled in his seat, his gaze fixed on the first class curtain.

Fischer appeared first, looking subdued and contemplative. Then Cobb, who had a stunned expression on his face, which was completely useless when it came to telling Neal what had happened. Then Yusuf and Ariadne appeared: Ariadne was smiling, Yusuf gave him a quick wink, and Neal finally started to relax.

Except that, after Saito, no one else reappeared.

Neal waited as business class started to de-plane, antsy and worried and trying to keep from fidgeting. People passed by him, but it wasn’t until the curtain was yanked closed again, trying to cover the sound of an argument, that he finally got up.

The stewardess glanced at him curiously, but she let him duck behind her into the first class cabin.

“…the kind of person you’re so loyal to?” Eames was hissing, his voice tight and furious. He and Arthur were standing at the nose of the plane, seemingly oblivious to Neal tucked against the wall of the galley. “Someone who brings all of us—even Ariadne—into a job without ever mentioning the fact a stray bullet could drop us into Limbo. That’s the man you follow, someone who risked all of our lives without any hesitation?”

Arthur snorted, his tone scathing.

“You’re calling _him_ callous? You were ready to bail whenever things got a little rough.”

“Because I had someone I wanted to come back to!” Eames snapped.

There was a brief, tense silence. Neal held his breath.

“You think I didn’t want to come back to you?” Arthur said raggedly. “To Neal? Is that what this is about?”

“That’s _always_ what this has been about. You left us.” Eames’ voice lowered. “You left _me_.”

Neal risked a glance from within the tiny alcove of the galley. He needn’t have bothered hiding: his parents were completely focused on each other. Eames was half-turned away, a bitter expression on his face that Arthur didn’t let stand for a second. He grabbed Eames’ arm, eyes narrowing.

“And you think that I wanted to?” he growled. “Do you really think the last two years have been easy for me? Every waking moment, when I wasn’t occupied with Cobb trying to take a swan-dive off the deep end, I have been missing you. I have been _empty_. And you refused to talk to me, refused any kind of contact. I was _alone_.”

Arthur’s voice broke on the last word. He let go of Eames’ arm, his hands falling to his sides. They stood there, close but not touching; together and apart.

“You promised,” Eames rasped, the words like ground-up glass. “You said you would be back in a month.”

“It’s the only promise to you I’ve ever broken.”

“It was a pretty big one.”

“I know,” Arthur said softly. “I’m sorry.”

He reached up, hesitantly, hand stretched out toward Eames’ cheek. But he didn’t complete the motion, lingering uncertain in mid-air.

Eames finished it for him.

The forger cupped Arthur’s hand in his own, pressing his cheek into Arthur’s palm. His shoulders slumped, tired and defenseless and vulnerable in a way he rarely ever showed.

“So am I,” he whispered hoarsely.

Arthur slid his other arm around Eames’ waist, slow and careful, like someone relearning how to use a limb after months of atrophy. They came together in a movement that was achingly slow, slotting back together in ways they’d thought they had forgotten. Eames’ fingers curled against Arthur’s back; Arthur’s face tucked into the curve of Eames’ neck.

“You have no idea how much I’ve missed you,” Eames breathed, barely loud enough to hear.

Arthur raised his head, his lips curved in a fragile smile as he pulled the thief impossibly closer.

“I think I do.”

Neal backed out of the galley on quiet feet, blinking away the wetness behind his eyes. He could leave them alone for a little while. They had time.

Now, finally, they had time.

 

* * *

 

Neal spent his eighteenth birthday in a quiet little cottage on the outskirts of London, surrounded by the only family that had ever mattered to him.

“Oh, you _didn’t_ ,” he breathed, staring at the aged parchment lying in a flat box on the table. He didn’t even dare touch it, fingers hovering over the edges of the piece.

Eames smiled.

“I saw you had your eye on it when we visited the Royal Library,” he said. “And you mentioned you’ve wanted to work on portraiture.”

The gift in question was a genuine original sketch by Leonardo da Vinci. It was a preliminary for Leda and the Swan, when da Vinci had been experimenting with unique hairstyles and trying to find the best pose for his demure depiction of Leda. Neal had always been planning to do a replica of it, but he’d never thought he would have the _original_ to work off of.

“As soon as I make a copy of you, you are going right down into the cellar,” Neal murmured reverently, running his finger along the edge of the paper.

“If you keep at the rate you’re going, the cellar’s going to be full by your next birthday,” Arthur pointed out, amused.

Neal flashed him a quick grin. He’d gone on a few heists of his own since they’d returned from Los Angeles—most noticeably to the Staatliche Museum in Berlin, because they had a Botticelli he _really_ wanted—and all of his spoils ended up back in London. The climate-controlled cellar was perfect for storing any rare pieces that fell into his possession, and the fact that Arthur and Eames acted as two round-the-clock security guards was just an added bonus.

The months since the inception job had not been completely smooth, but things eventually settled back into a rhythm. Eames took a few consultant jobs with his SAS contacts, and Arthur did long-distance recon whenever a case popped up that was interesting enough. They didn’t leave England; they barely left London. They seemed determined to fit back into each other’s lives in peace, for now, away from a world with gunfire and PASIV devices and subconscious security.

Not that they were completely broken of old habits, of course. Neal’s birthday present from Arthur was a gorgeous silver Aston Martin V12—with a VR4 ballistics protection level, failsafe tires and underbody explosive protection.

Arthur said to not go over 150 mph.

Neal judiciously planned to ignore him.

“Whatever happened to the stash in Portland?” Eames asked, bemused. Neal shrugged.

“Some of the lesser pieces are there, and at the vault in San Diego. But I don’t trust sending the important things anywhere other than here.”

Arthur smiled, swirling the Château Pétrus around in his glass. The expression on his face was soft and a little wistful.

“You’re going to leave soon, aren’t you?”

Neal froze, ducking his head. But Arthur wasn’t chastising and he didn’t even look surprised; neither did Eames, for that matter. He offered them a wry grin.

“How did you know?”

Eames chuckled. “We’re not complete imbeciles, despite what you may sometimes believe. The Staatliche, the Uffizi, the Czartoryski—every job you go on, you spend just a little bit longer away. You’re itching to get out into the world again, aren’t you?”

“I got addicted to it,” Neal said softly, staring down at his hands. “Exploring the world, seeing new things every day. There’s so much out there.”

“While we’re content to laze around here like old retirees,” Arthur added, his lips twitching. Neal glanced up with a smirk.

“Well, I wasn’t going to say it.”

Arthur shook his head with a smile.

“Do you have any plans?”

“Not yet,” Neal admitted. “I was thinking of going back to France for a while, or maybe Italy. And I do miss New York. I might go there eventually, see if Mozzie’s still around.”

Eames set his glass down on the table, sliding it off to the side. He fixed Neal with an intent look, folding his hands in front of him in a gesture Neal knew well enough by now to recognize as his father’s mask to conceal when he was feeling particularly vulnerable. Arthur seemed to notice as well, his mouth curving upward as he reached across the table to settle one of his hands over Eames’.

“You will come back to visit,” Eames said sternly, tone brooking no argument. “You’re still young and stupid, and you are still our son.”

“And this will always be your home,” Arthur added. “You’ll always have a place here.”

Neal looked between them: at the two men who had caused him so much grief and so much incredible joy over the years. His caretakers and his guardians, his friends and his fathers. His family, in every aspect of the word.

He smiled, and reached out to lay his own hand over their entwined ones.

“I know.”

 

* * *

 

 **Eight Years Later**

 

The phone rang only twice before Arthur picked up.

 _“So, what did you do this time?”_

Neal grinned, sipping his macchiato from one of the Plaza Hotel’s fine china cups.

“I’m not allowed to call my beloved father to say hello?”

Arthur snorted.

 _“Your last three aliases being frozen gets you more than just a hello.”_

“I was wondering how long it would take for you to know,” Neal mused, setting the cup down on the table. A copy of the New York Times had arrived with room service, and he flipped open to the Arts section, grin widening as he caught sight of the headline.

 _‘POLLOCK’S ‘EYES IN THE HEAT’ DISCOVERED TO BE FORGERY.’_

 _“I knew as soon as it happened,”_ Arthur replied tartly. _“I simply decided to not call you at three in the morning.”_

“My thanks,” Neal murmured, tucking the article away for future filing and gloating purposes.

 _“Is that Neal?”_ came a familiar, rather miffed-sounding voice from the other line, indicating Neal was on speaker. _“Tell the stupid boy to stop **signing** things.”_

“You heard about the Van Gogh!” Neal said, delighted. He could _hear_ Eames pinching the bridge of his nose, all the way over in London.

 _“And I will not be surprised when I hear about you landing in prison because you had to write your name on every forgery you’ve done.”_

“Not _every_ forgery,” Neal protested. “Just the really good ones.”

There was a brief pause.

 _“Alright, the Van Gogh was pretty decent,”_ Eames admitted.

 _“Stop encouraging him.”_

Neal stood up from the table, cradling his phone against his ear as he tightened the cord of the plush bathrobe he’d found hanging in the bathroom. He wandered over to the balcony, pushing the doors open and stepping out into the crisp morning air.

“The agent they have on me is good,” Neal said, back to business in an instant. He looked down at the street below, picking out the absurdly obvious maintenance van parked across from his suite. “He flagged most of my aliases when he took my case last year; it was only a matter of time before he found the rest.”

The only alias that hadn’t been dredged up was the elusive Steve Tabernackle, but Steve had issues and entanglements that made being chased by the FBI look like a cakewalk. Neal wasn’t planning on using him any time soon.

 _“Peter Burke, right?”_ Arthur asked, the sound of paper shuffling in the background. _“He’s very well-regarded in the Bureau. By-the-book, but he can think outside the box better than most FBI agents—which is probably why he’s so good at tracking you.”_

“He is not tracking me!” Neal squawked, insulted. “We are in a slow dance of wit and cunning and sometimes I give him little leads to follow because he’s cute when he thinks he’s onto something.”

 _“You’re full of shit,”_ Eames said flatly. _“And if you keep this up you’re going to get caught.”_

“Prison isn’t _that_ hard to escape,” Neal shrugged.

 _“Neal,”_ Arthur said, cutting off whatever indignant response Eames had, _“About Katherine—”_

Neal brightened immediately. It seemed to be an automatic reaction whenever Kate was mentioned. He’d met her only a few months ago, when he had been directed to Robert Moreau, a high-end fence of Renaissance art. Alex—his usual fence, who he had met in Moscow, who specialized in Eastern European finds, who had a wicked sense of humor and a razor-sharp tongue—hadn’t been in town, so she gave him Robert’s number. Robert himself was a decent man, honest enough as thieves went, but it was his beautiful, blue-eyed, breathtaking daughter that had caught Neal’s attention.

He’d known Arthur would put together a file as soon as he’d mentioned her.

“She’s amazing, isn’t she?” Neal smiled, leaning against the balcony railing. “We went skating at Rockefeller the other night. It was gorgeous out.”

 _“She has a gun registered to her name,”_ Arthur said flatly. Neal rolled his eyes.

“So do I, what’s your point? It’s not like I ever use it. Besides, Kate hates guns as much as I do.”

 _“I don’t think anyone hates guns as much as you do.”_

“Probably true,” Neal admitted. He’d always thought Arthur despaired a bit because of it. The man could field-strip an M16 in under a minute, but his son barely deigned to touch any kind of weaponry.

Neal sighed.

“I take it you don’t approve, then?”

It wasn’t as though he would change anything if his parents _did_ disapprove, of course. He would take it under advisement. Probably. Sort of like he took Mozzie’s and Alex’s disapproval under advisement. Mozzie didn’t like Kate and Alex didn’t like Kate, but Mozzie didn’t like anyone and Alex didn’t like anyone Neal dated.

 _“We would never disapprove of your decisions, Neal,”_ Arthur said.

 _“Says you,”_ Eames muttered in the background.

 _“We just want you to be careful,”_ Arthur continued, ignoring the forger. _“We want you to stay safe.”_

Neal smiled softly, hearing the concern in his father’s voice. Safe physically, safe mentally, safe emotionally—all of that was covered by Arthur’s gentle tone. He wondered what Arthur would think if he said he was tired of running; if he said that Kate was the kind of person worth settling down for, worth giving up everything for. The aliases and the forgeries, the masks and the deceit. The constant looking over his shoulder, wondering how close he was to being caught. Kate deserved more than that.

“I’ll be alright,” he said, glancing down at the maintenance van. A waiter from the Plaza’s restaurant was crossing the street, heading right for the badly-concealed FBI agents.

 _“Are you sure?”_ Arthur asked. _“You’re good, Neal. But don’t underestimate your opponent. Do you have a plan?”_

Neal watched as the waiter knocked on the back doors of the van. After a moment they opened, revealing a rather flustered-looking Peter Burke. The man stared at the proffered champagne and macaroons in the waiter’s hands. Then he turned, looking up to scowl directly at Neal. Neal offered a wave and a shit-eating grin in return, and later he would swear there was amusement behind Burke’s adorably annoyed expression.

He smiled.

“I’ll lead them on a merry chase.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> **Art referenced:**  
> [Georges Seurat: The Eiffel Tower](http://pics.livejournal.com/cradle_song/pic/000bdrw4)  
> [Hieronymus Bosch: The Garden of Earthly Delights (high res)](http://pics.livejournal.com/cradle_song/pic/000be72s)  
> [Hungarian Triregnum (Papal tiara)](http://pics.livejournal.com/cradle_song/pic/000bhsw6)  
> [James Whistler: Nocturne - Blue and Gold](http://pics.livejournal.com/cradle_song/pic/000bges2)  
> [The Portland Vase](http://pics.livejournal.com/cradle_song/pic/000bf993)  
> [Rufino Tamayo: Animales](http://pics.livejournal.com/cradle_song/pic/000bk3k0)  
> [Caravaggio: The Entombment of Christ](http://pics.livejournal.com/cradle_song/pic/000bppf9)   
>      - (thanks to for catching my title!fail <3)  
> [Easter Island’s Moai heads](http://pics.livejournal.com/cradle_song/pic/000brz63)  
> [‘Rosebud’ Fabergé egg](http://pics.livejournal.com/cradle_song/pic/000bqxrp)  
> [Eugène Delacroix: Liberty Leading the People](http://pics.livejournal.com/cradle_song/pic/000bwzxx)  
> [Venus de Milo](http://pics.livejournal.com/cradle_song/pic/000bs84e)  
> [Jacques-Louis David: The Coronation of Napoleon](http://pics.livejournal.com/cradle_song/pic/000btefw)  
> [Topkapi dagger](http://pics.livejournal.com/cradle_song/pic/000bzx3p)  
> [Eric Clapton’s ‘Blackie’ guitar](http://pics.livejournal.com/cradle_song/pic/000by0gx)  
> [Charles Hollander chess set](http://pics.livejournal.com/cradle_song/pic/000bxw19)  
> [Leonardo da Vinci: Study for Head of Leda](http://pics.livejournal.com/cradle_song/pic/000c092g)  
>     - ([Neal’s apartment](http://pics.livejournal.com/cradle_song/pic/000c1dsg))  
> Jackson Pollock: Eyes in the Heat
> 
> **Translations:**  
>  _Bonne nuit, mon père/fils_ : French, ‘Good night, father/son.’  
>  _Allons-y_ : French, ‘Let’s go.’
> 
>  **Thanks:**  
>  To my lovely, amazingful reviewers and cheerleaders over at the prompt at , who I could not have done without, and who made writing this an absolute delight; to the original prompter, without whom this would obviously not have been written; and of course to my darling GF/beta Jo, who put up with much of my shit and flailing. ♥
> 
> Also posted at [Livejournal](http://windswept-fic.livejournal.com/39735.html).

**Works inspired by this one:**

  * [Life in Interesting Times](https://archiveofourown.org/works/482781) by [rapacityinblue](https://archiveofourown.org/users/rapacityinblue/pseuds/rapacityinblue)




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